California Schemin'

TIFF REVIEW: BY EDEN PROSSER

January 11, 2026

3 OUT OF 5 STARS

Can anyone really fake it ’til they make it? Such seems the question on the mind of  Gavin Bain (Séamus McLean Ross) and Billy Boyd (Samuel Bottomley), the leads at the center of James McAvoy’s directorial debut, California Schemin’. Translating a truer-than-fiction tale to the silver screen, the multi-hyphenate returns to his Scottish roots in a narrative interpretation of two near-mythic hometown legends. Enter: the stratospheric rise of Silibil N’ Brains, the late-90s dynamic duo whose world-conquering ambitions had them pulling perhaps the greatest con of all: a reinvention of their very selves.

Gavin Bain dreamed of stratospheric stardom. The issue: it’s difficult to break free of a stifling hometown—particularly when said location doesn’t hold much weight upon the world stage. Raised on turn-of-the-century rap, his call-center day-to-day pales in comparison to what he’s accomplished after hours: alongside Boyd, the dreamer moonlights as an artist, the two crafting a smattering of their own kind of rap. It’s half-decent—more than that, really—and so, after stumbling upon a flyer advertising a London-based open audition, hosted by the very talent scouts who hold the keys to a recording future, Bain and Boyd decide they simply must go. This is it! The ticket to forever fame: conquer London, conquer the world. They have the material; they have the skill; it’s simple as one-two-three.

Alas, there’s a culture divide between the Scotsmen and the Brits, one epitomized by the reaction of the scouts to the boys’ rap. The lyrics may be solid, but their accents—the scouts do little more than chuckle. Who, they say, would listen to rap from a Scot? The very thought, they say, is laughable.

Any other artist might retreat, following such feedback. Not Bain. Though Boyd is, initially, content to return to the call center—and magnetic girlfriend Mary (a scene-stealing Lucy Halliday), Bain refuses to let his dream be snuffed by some posh panel. It’s not their music that the scouts decried: it’s their very identity. The solution? Undergo a personal overhaul: adapt an American accent, devise an elegant backstory, and present themselves to labels not as authentic Scots, but Californians: appealing, palatable, undeniable to the masses. The plan: grow their popularity, land a coveted performance spot on MTV, then reveal their true identity—decrying the industry’s prejudice against the Scotsmen, the artists they’ve dismissed simply because they don’t fit the mold. Of course, a simple lie is never quite so simple—and success, once accrued, is difficult to sacrifice.

This is precisely the kind of high-concept premise that simply begs for cinematic adaptation. In fact, it’s all the more impressive that the story’s rooted in such truth. The script holds all the hallmarks of prototypical story structure: a brilliant, if ill-fated, claim to fame; the pursuit of an impossible plot; two characters who land themselves at the top of the world—and the high-stakes ticking clock of inevitability, injecting tension as one lingers to discover whether they’ll get away with their plan—or if their newfound world will collapse around them. It may be a structure tread many times before; still, one cannot tear their eyes from the thrill of long-deserved success, nor the trainwreck one knows will inevitably ensue. The stakes are high; the beats, compelling; and the leads, scrappy and charismatic, draw both gaze and heart towards the silver screen.

Perhaps most intriguingly, at no point in its runtime does it feel as though it’s the debut of a well-known cinematic mainstay. This, of course, can be seen as both great strength and detriment: though McAvoy’s directing is not flashy, and his supporting role, evoking the whiff of a vanity choice (‘hey, look, that’s the guy who made the movie!’), so, too, do his directorial decisions blend the film seamlessly into the canon of similar scrappy-underdog, trials-to-success-type biopics. 

Atmospheric grit, cinematographic simplicity, and the relative formulaic nature of its beats coalesce, positing the film as one which could, in all appearances, be attributed to any director who’d spent their life behind the camera—making it all the more impressive that, despite displaying few visual, nor tonal hallmarks of its own, McAvoy managed to produce such a seamlessly chameleonic product on his first jaunt.

The film, scrappy in its own endearing way, feels tonally expansive, particularly as its atmosphere reflects the experiential journey of its dual leads. While Ross’s Gavin lights up the screen with his high-octane persona—temper flared, a firecracker, flaming, commanding attention from prologue through to credits’ roll—it’s Bottomley who provides the heart, as his cautious Billy, tempered in evocation, fights to straddle the line between ‘responsible’ and ‘rockstar.’ One finds themselves rooting for the latter as he strives to stick to his beliefs; where Gavin acts as the personification of long-shot wish fulfillment, Billy steps in as audience surrogate, anchoring the chaos in a recognizable reality. That said, it is the supporting cast who, often, outshine our leads; Lucy Halliday, playing Billy’s girlfriend Mary, is magnetic in her ‘takes-no-BS’ spirit; sweetness coincides with confidence, crafting a compelling face who shines in each of her woefully-infrequent scenes. Rebekah Murrell’s record-executive Tessa contributes further empathic strength to the narrative, as her trusting—if naïve—chirpiness provides both a sense of authenticity and a gloriously captivating semblance of doomed virtue to the narrative.

Ultimately, the film’s greatest strength lies in its sense of fun. It’s genuinely enjoyable to watch the boys catapult to the very tip-top of the charts, accomplishing all they’ve ever dreamed, even as they balance on the delicate precipice of success. Furthermore, there’s an electric energy between the film’s main duo, chemistry crackling as camaraderie begins its own dynamic push-and-pull. The highest highs, the lowest lows, are oh-so-cinematic: concerts are performed before crowds of thousands, extras roaring, high-octane mile-a-minute rap tracks blaring at full blast; booze, drugs, rock-n’-roll enter the narrative, complicating matters for our leads with a touch of cinematic ecstacy. As Bain and Boyd rollercoaster through one of the most thrilling worldwide industries, compulsion simply deepens; and though there’s a ticking clock—truth always comes out, of course; at the end of the day, that is, of course, the film’s primary source of tension—it’s simply so exhilarating to watch the boys express their every dream on their path to musical immortality. It may tread little new ground, and even those unfamiliar with Bain and Boyd’s story may find oneself unsurprised by the progression of each beat; still, it’s quite the pleasant romp, and a worthy palate-cleanser in the midst of the film festival’s heavier hitters.