Supercross: The Movie Movie Review

The biggest problem with the Internet Movie Database is that whatever person reviews a film first gets his review displayed first on the site. Take a look at some of your favorite films and you’re bound to be confronted with a review by some shmuck who thinks the picture stinks. His review is littered with spelling errors and consists of things like “movie sucked cause no one got blowed up,” but there it is for the entire world to see.

If you look up Supercross you’ll get a review that says the movie is great, in fact it’s the “best movie [the reviewer] has ever seen” for numerous reasons including, “Steve Howie [sic]… is so hot.”

If you look it up at Rotten Tomatoes, you’ll see that most critics considered it one of the worst films of 2005.

So, who’s right?

Well, honestly, neither of them are. Though the critics are closer.

The plot is simple. Really simple. Two brothers, whose relationship is heavily strained emotionally, are competitors in the sport of Supercross motorcycle racing. KC (Steve Howey, the hot one mentioned above) and Trip Carlyle (Mike Vogel) must put aside their differences and find common ground when Trip’s career is cut short and the Carlyle legacy lies in the hands of KC.

Sure, many films have been made about worse sports. (Gleaming the Cube rocked when I was in 8th grade, but most skateboarding movies are bottom of the barrel.) But Supercross is a real phenomenon beloved by teenaged fans in trucker caps chewing Skoal (or Big League Chew in the case of the younger crowd) who like to see machines and people slam into dirt. And Supercross: The Movie delivers that in spades. We get lots of pumped up, testosterone and grease spitting shots of Supercross bikes flying overhead as the wheels spin and the exhaust belches. We get lots of dirt-spattered sequences of riders pitched off their bikes and soaring through the sky. And we get lots of disorienting POV shots to punch the finale into the teen action stratosphere. If you’re a 13-year-old boy who loves building dirt bike ramps in the backyard, you’re in heaven.

That’s all good. But the characters are cardboard, the acting MTV bad, the editing patchwork and the drama nonexistent. (Doesn’t it tell you something when characters have names like Starr, Rowdy Sparks, and Piper?) Other critics have mentioned this, but the sequences that take place outside of the Supercross races have a grimy, almost pornographic feel to them. They are underlit and smarmy. I was waiting for Ron Jeremy to make an appearance hawking herbal erectile dysfunction pills.

Too bad the DVD doesn’t just cut out all the exposition and plot and (yikes) the actors and just show the hyper-edited shots of Supercross bikes flipping and flying. On second thought….

And she can stay, too.