Here is a larger than life film that would feel far-fetched were it not based on a true story. Based on Gavin Bain’s semi-autobiography, California Schemin’ loosely recounts the story of two aspiring rappers from Dundee who, disillusioned by a seemingly cliquey business, faked being an established American duo in an effort to take over the British music industry. It’s wild, heartfelt, true to itself, and a whole lot of fun, propped by incredible performances from the two leads and a sound direction from James McAvoy in his debut.
California Schemin’ starts where all rags to riches stories start – in a dead-end job, breaks fuelled by hopes and dreams. Gavin (Séamus McLean Ross) and Billy (Samuel Bottomley) spend all the time they have practising their songs and hanging out with Billy’s down-to-earth girlfriend Mary (Lucy Halliday), but it isn’t until a flunked audition in London that they really decide to take matters into their own hands. It is here that Silibil N’ Brains is born, a Californian-based rapping duo with strange accents and ties to D12. And from there, everything unravels – after invading a stage at an underground gig, they are scouted and signed with one of the biggest music production companies, where McAvoy’s very grizzly, very Scottish Anthony reigns supreme. There’s a penthouse apartment, a personal recording studio, and a growing fanbase of “Brits who love the Yanks”. It’s fun at first, to pretend and to plot the downfall of the music industry by revealing its “racism” – until, drowned in stardom and drugs, it’s difficult to remember.
Despite a dark second half and an important core message, California Schemin’ is by and large feel good, perhaps because it sounds so inconceivable, mythical almost in its utopia – for those who wish for their journey to fame to speed up, it is like watching a dream. Of course, the lesson here is clear, and it is one that struggles to make its way through to Gavin and Billy to begin with. It is easy to have fun with them, to rejoice in their newfound fame and to revel in the lie that we as an audience are partial to – but it is obvious where it is going from the beginning. Billy unravels first, weighed by his love for Mary, who waits patiently in Dundee for her boys to come home. Halliday is particularly strong casting here, both vulnerable in her small-town-girl-in-the-big-city energy yet headstrong and deeply grounded compared to how untethered the boys become. Naturally, it is Gavin who suffers the most from the scam – when we are first introduced to him, he is being bullied by schoolchildren; he is more hesitant, more nervous before going onstage. He falls slowly, then all at once, just as Billy begins to see through their success. While Kneecap-esque in effect, focused on the wilful wishing of boys on a council estate, California Schemin’ isn’t about the music (as good as it is) – it’s about the impact of the lie, on those who are subject to it, but also on those who tell it. McLean Ross, Bottomley and Halliday are a fire trio here, truly like best friends who have been slapped onto a screen – they are what make California Schemin’, and they are also what remind us that should fame come, roots should never be forgotten.
