California Schemin'

California Schemin’ is one of those stories that you wouldn’t believe in if it wasn’t true.

An interesting choice of directorial debut for James McAvoy, this is a musical biopic featuring arguably the least well known musicians to ever be given the feature length treatment.

The surprisingly little known story of Scottish rap duo Silibil’ N’ Brains is certainly worth telling though.

After receiving rejections due to their accents (it’s crazy to think how far regional hip-hop and other genres has boomed since the early noughties and the potential heights they could have scaled if they were emerging now), the two young rappers go all in on faking American personas and, inevitably, find success in doing so.

They release a debut single, film a video, get onto music television and book a support slot with D12.

Of course, everything has to go south and it inevitably does but you’ll have a lot of fun in getting there.

Despite the uniqueness of the story, this follows the rather predictable biopic formula and doesn’t try and do all that much with the format.

Fortunately, a tight script and immensely likable performances keep the momentum intact although, as good as the music is, the actual musical scenes are surprisingly poorly filmed in terms of shot choice.

So it’s certainly an interesting snapshot of an odd time in the music industry, a hugely entertaining and wild story and a charming depiction of a group who, sadly, never got the chance they deserved just wrapped up in a slightly generic package.

⭐️⭐️⭐️