Supercross: The Movie

Well, all good things come to an end. Such is the case with the winning streak of perfectly dreadful movies getting progressively shorter — from Stealth to The Dukes of Hazzard to Deuce Bigalow. Admittedly, Supercross: The Movie (as opposed to what? Supercross: The Lobotomy?) is shorter than Deuce Bigalow, but only by three minutes. And that’s not enough.

Actually, this film is even worse than The Dukes of Hazzard and Stealth, though offensive in a different way from the latter. In fact, I’m hard-pressed to call Supercross a movie at all. I’ve seen movies — lots of movies, too many movies — and this is not one in any real sense of the word.

Supercross is more like flipping back and forth between ESPN and one of the less-demanding teen-centric TV networks. Possibly this is exactly how TV writers Bart Baker and Ken Solarz cobbled together what passes for the script. It would certainly explain the gaping wounds in the narrative — like the entire subplot that’s dragged in about our heroes’ dead biker dad, which goes absolutely nowhere and is quickly forgotten. (This is perhaps where Darryl Hannah’s scenes went, since she’s listed among the guilty parties in the press releases, but is not credited on the film, nor does she appear in it, unless she’s cleverly disguised as Robert Carradine.)

Not that the script matters, since this is essentially an 80-minute infommercial from Clear Channel Entertainment Motor Sports (yes, Clear Channel), designed to get the viewer to actually pay money so he or she can be convinced that motocross is the happening thing. It is, I suspect, an exercise in some form of mind control by the media giant.

The story — to the degree there is one — concerns K.C. (Steve Howey, TV’s Reba) and Trip (Mike Vogel, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants). The narration (by Trip) assures us that Carlyle and Trip are “tight,” but different. Well, they’re different in that K.C. is the responsible one of the pair while Trip is the wild hothead, and it’s hard not to suspect that the mailman isn’t the real father of one of them.

However, they both say “man” and “dude” and “bummer” a lot and have no interests other than motorbikes and girls — in that order. One priceless line has them getting together with their friends for a hot evening of discussing motorbike tune-ups or something equally riveting, but this is, after all, a movie where an over-the-hill (at 26) racer is summed up with, “There’s a lot of tread left on that tire,” which kind of says all you need to know.

I do not know who either of these guys are, but Howey looks like the third runner-up in a Ben Affleck look-alike contest, while Vogel rather resembles a chipmunk (at first I thought he had a wad of tobacco in his cheek). Acting is not their forte.

The pair get a nicely matched set of girlfriends — brunette Sophia Bush (TV’s One Tree Hill) for brunette Howey and blonde Cameron Richardson (TV’s Point Pleasant) for blond Vogel. (It’s like some creepy genetics experiment.) Bush looks too smart to be playing a law student who is ready to throw away everything about her own life to become a motocross camp follower. Richardson, on the other hand, is more believable as the racer who gives it all up to stand by her man after he lets her show him her “spread.” This is not a compliment.

The plot has K.C. getting a job as a sponsored rider (“I love your hunger. You’re like a rabid dog”), leaving Trip to go it alone as a “privateer.” This causes a rift between the duo — until an accident bangs up Trip and gives him “head trauma” (that anyone notices a difference).

Presumably, however, this is all about the racing, so most of the film involves really loud motorbikes zipping around tracks and flying through the air while sports announcers scream at us in an attempt to make us think this is exciting — and to better clarify what’s going on. The latter pursuit is a dismal failure, since the breathless yelling (why do sportscasters have to yell everything?) is often at odds with the images on the screen.

The whole thing is a riot of choppy editing of blurry and grainy pictures (plus obligatory helmet-cam shots) that smell of stock-footage inserts every time the crowd reacts to the action. Doubtless, motocross enthusiasts are sure to find some kind of merit in Supercross, but I cannot imagine anyone else will find it anything but a headache-inducing bore-fest of monstrous proportions. Rated PG-13 for language and some sexuality.

— reviewed by Ken Hanke