California Schemin is sold as ‘Based on a True Lie’ and tells the story of Gavin Bain and Billy Boyd as they pretend to be American rappers. The ‘true’ story seems to suggest (based on what I read on Wikipedia) that all this took place over the course of about six months. Their plan in the film after they get signed is to wait until they are on some MTV show and then confess to try and expose the business but Gavin gets seduced by the instant success they experience and when Billy wants to confess all he is overruled by Gavin and their relationship starts to feel the strain.
I thought the central performances were quite good. Both Séamus McLean Ross and Samuel Bottomley have good chemistry together and come across as really good friends. You start to side with Billy and the story progresses because you know he is serious about exposing the truth and when Gavin starts to weasel out of the confessing, you know that he is the villain of the piece which makes sense as the novel this is based on is written by Boyd.
I did find myself feeling sorry for Tessa. She was desperate to try and climb up the ladder in the company she was in and pinned all her hopes on Billy and Gavin and when the truth is revealed she is the one that has to pay the price. There were a couple of shots that reminded me of the Dev Patel film Monkey Man in the sense that there were a couple of shots with extreme close up and made me wonder if anyone on the production realised that cameras came with a zoom, the same issue happened in this film. Thankfully they were few and far between.
I enjoyed California Schemin’. It’s rather predictable even if like me you are not aware of the true story but its directed well enough but I dont think it will have a particularly wide audience outside of Scotland and people who like that kind of music. If you can get past the music then there is enough to like and well worth 107 minutes of your time.
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