A BAFTA nominee that flew under the radar here in the states, Scrapper is now available for anyone who has been obsessed with paper Moon and wanted to see a possible update. It’s not, but it is certainly close. Sadly, this independent British feature is on Paramount Plus without audio description.
Lola Campbell will steal your heart, much like Tatum O’Neal did in her Oscar nominated performance in Paper Moon. Campbell plays a young girl who is scheming her way through life as we come to realize she’s basically alone in the world. That is, until her estranged father comes back into her life, not just changing the course of her life, but also his. Can two people with distance come together, or is this little scrapper too streetwise and street smart to stand for her father’s late stage parenting.
Despite how I just described it, this isn’t a kids film. It’s made for adults, just happening to feature a child lead actress. Campbell is truly one of those once in a generation talents who can carry this film, which features a heavily unknown list of British actors, and make it worth your time. It’s problematic that Paramount Plus is presenting this without audio description, as it is a newer title, and I suspect this has more to do with apathy than a simple lack of availability of audio description. If it were the latter, I would concede that Paramount’s current library has far more obvious titles that should be adding audio description over this British indie with no stars.
Still, one would hope that a film like this made itself accessible to its initial UK audience, and there’s no reason we can’t have that same track. If I watch a film from the UK, I expect UK audio description. I don’t need an American to make me feel comforted. I just need accessibility.
So, while I enjoyed Lola Campbell’s performance a lot, her film is not the most accessible, and there are a lot of things we miss by not having audio description. I wish I could give this film a pass, as Campbell has all the makings of the next big thing, but this just doesn’t make enough sense.
Final Grade: Unwatchable
Projected Grade With Audio Description: B, B+, A-