A lot of the important stuff was real: the songs, the rhymes, the flow, the friendship. It was the window-dressing that was, well, dressing. In the early aughts, a pair of Scottish BFFs, Gavin Bain and Billy Boyd, were desperate to escape their provincial lives in coastal Scotland. The boys loved rapping and revered acts like D12 and Eminem, and they weren’t half-bad at it, either. The problem? No one wanted to hear or see or support Scottish dudes rapping, with one now-iconic audition ending when a scout sniffed at them and called them “rapping Proclaimers.”
What are two plucky boys to do? In real life, just as in James McAvoy’s peppy feature directorial debut “California Schemin’” that tracks the story two decades later, it became a question of giving the audience what they wanted. And what they wanted, Gavin and Billy decided, was a pair of rappers from California. So from California they shall be.
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For his feature directorial debut, proud Scotsman James McAvoy has plenty of material to pull from: The real story of Gavin and Billy, of course, plus Bain’s 2010 memoir of the same name and a 2013 documentary entitled “The Great Hip Hop Hoax,” Archie Thomson and Elaine Gracie’s screenplay, and McAvoy’s own apparently complicated feelings about his homeland. Scotland was complicated to Gavin and Billy too, and while their scheme initially involved a planned big reveal of their actual provenance, all the better to stick it to a classist and elitist industry that didn’t want their brogues in their rap music, that slowly falls away.
It’s fun enough at first, thanks to McAvoy’s energetic direction and strong turns from its young stars, including Seamus McLean Ross (as Gavin, later to be known as Brains), Samuel Bottomley (as Billy, later to be known as Silibil), and the very charming Lucy Halliday (as Billy’s girlfriend Mary). The trio work together in a call center in suburban Dundee, but quiet Gavin can’t help but dream big. When he hears about an open audition in London (McAvoy himself plays a wonderfully scuzzy music executive who puts out the call), he and Billy alight for the big city.
It doesn’t go well, and when the boys are laughed out of the office, the city, the country, Gavin won’t give up. Free-wheeling, high-spirited Billy doesn’t seem so very bothered, but it’s Billy’s own work ethos that gives Gavin his brilliant idea: at the call center, they give the customers what they want. Why not do that with their rapping? Bolstered by a delightful montage that sees the boys boning up on their American culture and accents — watching “Die Hard” and screaming “show me the money!” and “we were on a break!” — the energy is flying by the time they set out for London again.
This time, they are from “San de Angeles.” They speak with a surfer boy affect. They are wearing a metric ton of skater kid apparel. They are Silibil N Brainz. The duo essentially bluff their way through the city, eventually catching the eye of scout Tessa (Rebekah Murrell), who helps them land a contract almost immediately, their dreams coming true with startling speed. But as they zip through early aughts London (a trip to the MTV studios to appear on “The Hook” will give Millennial movie-goers some serious flashbacks), their quest to “expose the wankers” takes a hard turn. Turns out, the razzle-dazzle of the industry can blind just about anyone.
Many of the story beats here are quite traditional to the music biopic genre — Billy starts sleeping around and skipping calls from Mary, Gavin gets really into drugs and alcohol, both of the boys go all-in on being “from California” — and it all starts careening toward the inevitable. But that’s sort of the point: these stories, both real and fake, follow this trope-laden arc because that’s what tends to happen most often. The industry chews people up and spits them (and their dreams) right back out.
It’s the oldest story in the book, but it’s made all the more crushing in “California Schemin’” because Gavin and Billy are so very convinced they’re the ones pulling one over on the brass. That tension is never quite resolved, however, and as the film moves closer to its expected revelations, we can already guess how and where this all might end. Same old song, just with a slightly different tempo.
Grade: B-
“California Schemin’” premiered at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
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