a5c7b9f00b A motorcycle saga that chronicles the personal journey of two brothers who overcome emotional and physical obstacles to achieve success in the competitive world of Supercross racing. The brothers' conflicts are magnified by their different life choices and their decision to become competitors and rivals. KC Carlyle is a more cautious rider than his younger brother Trip, who has more natural talent but takes too many risks. When KC gets an all-expenses paid factory–corporate sponsored–ride, a rift forms between the two brothers. Trip is forced to go at it alone, becoming a privateer–a rider without a sponsor. But when a career threatening crash ends Trip's Supercross career, he and KC realize that they must put aside their conflicts, and work together to help KC defeat the world's greatest Supercross champions. Faced with the suspicious death of their father, two brothers must motivate one another to get back on their bikes and take the Las Vegas Motocross Championships by storm. First let me say I've been watching Supercross since about the mid 1980s when Rick Johnson and David Bailey were banging bars.<br/><br/>As a fan and former pit crew member of an MX race team I was excited to hear about this movie. Especially so when I saw real MXers were consulted and used. It was only a matter of having not had a chance to see it until recently. They pumped it up at the races for two years, a lot of industry people involved, I figured it would be good no matter what….<br/><br/>Of course the story is thin, the actors were weak, and the realism often questionable. But I would have been willing to suspend those things just to enjoy the movie about a sport I love.<br/><br/>I was even willing to grant them the leeway of putting a relative unknown into a Factory ride with Nami racing, skipping the Lites class altogether. In this case all they needed to do was claim that KC could have raced in Europe or something, or make the entire case slightly younger and claim that he jumped into the fold from amateur racing at 19-20. After all Yamaha's Josh Hill has stepped into the mix on a 450cc SX machine and won races this season as an 18 year old rookie.<br/><br/>But far and away the most moronic thing was the fictional Nami Racing being upset that KC won. I happen to know for a fact that as much as a factory wants a champion, they are not going to begrudge a new guy winning. If anything, this in fact makes the bike look even better that an unknown rider could go out and spank the other factories on it…..you cannot buy that kind of publicity and proving….<br/><br/>The entire notion of "blocking" as it is portrayed is nonsense. Team Yamaha is not going to tell Josh Hill to pull over so Chad Reed can go by, and they are not going to tell Hill to take out Kevin Windham so Reed is not "bothered" by him. If your top guy cannot win without someone blocking, he is not going to win at all. I'm not sure where the inspiration was for this other than to create controversy and give KC an excuse to quit the factory ride……..<br/><br/>Certainly they could have come up with a better idea to give KC a reason to quit Nami. A fight with Rowdy to create tension between the two would have been better. As it was the Rowdy role was weak at best and undeveloped.<br/><br/>They also managed to somehow fail to capture power and grace of SX/MX racing. This seems almost impossible considering Speed Channel manages to catch it every week at the track with no script. And thousands of MX/SX videos have captured since the dawn of racing. The sound effects were odd at times, and did not help convey anything other then racket, when they could have been used to enhance.<br/><br/>I am willing to suspend belief for movies more often than not. But with this one I had a hard time understanding why those choices were made. Especially considering they are major plot points that drive the entire story…… in this case they drive the story right into the face of a huge triple and leave you wanting a rewrite…. How can the writers of this movie cash their checks for what they did to one of the best sports for kids and adults. Did these guys ever attend a SX race? Did they even know what SX is until they saw some clips of real SX events? The script for this mess wouldn't be good enough to pass a high school writing class. They had to know that most of the people attending this movie would have some familiarity with SX and know how preposterous it is for an unproven rookie to get a factory ride. Yeah, and the Patriots look for their quarterbacks at the pick up games down at the city park.<br/><br/>Here comes the spoiler (though anyone that watches the first five minutes of the movie and can't figure out how it will end is either watching the first movie of their life or sound asleep).<br/><br/>KC gets a factory ride and walks away from it because its the right thing to do and beats his old teammate at the big race. Riiiiiight! I've been riding bikes for 30 years. My son and I have been going to 2 SX races every year since 1996 - one here at home on St. Louis as well as a weekend trip to Indianapolis. We've met all of the top racers from the last 15 years (including Tyler Evans) because they all accessible at the races during practices or in the pits. They are always nice and appreciative of the fans - whether its Jeremy or Ricky some lowly privateer with a 3 digit number.<br/><br/>I know this movie was promoted at the races for two years before it was released and looking a the number of producers involved I can't believe someone couldn't figure out how to put the feeling of a real race into the picture. There were about ten seconds where I felt the excitement of walking into the RCA Dome for a race. The racing sequences were so phony and staged. Watch a race where Bubba or Ricky get a bad start and start moving up to catch the race leaders. Every time they pass someone the crowd roars until they take the lead and the stadium starts rocking.<br/><br/>My expectations were not real high going into the theater. I knew this wasn't going to be Olivier doing Shakespeare. I mean Mike Vogel reached his acting heights on Grounded For Life. But the puppets on Mr Rogers do a better job of showing genuine emotions than anyone on this movie.<br/><br/>1 star is really too many for this movie but since I can't give it zero it will have to do. But if you really want to see some good SX racing, get one of the Bar To Bar highlight DVDs. The people in them are real racers and they show highlights from real races, but the acting and the stories are better than Supercross - The Movie. Unfortunately, while director Steve Boyum is a successful stunt man and off-road biker, his skills do not extend to the relatively passive arena of filmmaking. Somehow, he even makes much of the action static.
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366 weeks ago