Oh What The Hell; Supercross: An Essay

Supercross (Director: Steve Boyum)

Boyum served mostly as a stunt guy and 2nd unit director, and his credits are diverse and special. His directing career, though, has a bunch of misses and probably his most recognizable credit is the 1998 surfers-in-Yellowstone bomb Meet the Deedles. Supercross opened August 17.

This past year Hollywood has, quite obviously, gone overboard on sequels, remakes, spinoffs, and updates. The other thing Hollywood has gone overboard on is the underground minor sport film. You can either blame The Fast and the Furious or Blue Crush, but these films are all over the place now. This year we've seen boat racing (Madison), surfing and skateboarding (Lords of Dogtown), and now motocross.

There's not much different between these movies other than the actual sport. All three involve the underdog, usually poor or barely able to keep up with the hobby. Corporate sponsers loom as evil exploiters--they serve as antagonists ready to be your best friend if you sign on the dotted line, but once the signature is on paper they want to (for shame!) make money with your name and "water down" the rebellious nature of the sport with endorsements and equipment far more advanced than that piece of crap you own that you spent a lifetime saving up for and maintaining.

Earlier this summer Lords of Dogtown got some pretty good reviews, but where I thought it went south was when it decided to sloppily make its way to the finish, after some really good action brought the viewer as close to skateboarding without actually skateboarding. Madison was always rather handicapped in this area, because either the funds were too low to make the movie or the filmmakers didn't care enough to take us into the race without feeling like a spectator. I feel the exact same way about Supercross.

I can stand all of the facets of a B-movie--low-rent acting, poor production value, and so on, as long as the filmmakers decide to go all-out with action. The reason why you make a movie like this is that the sport is exciting--tell us why it's exciting! I counted one shot in this movie that looked like an attempt to get out there in the mud with the racers but it was all too brief. The rest of the action involves watching from afar, and the action again can be confusing or have to be told to us by an excited motocross announcer. This is the kind of thing that takes me out of a movie.

I will give some kudos to Robert Patrick in this--his character Earl Cole has all of the elements of being one of those secondary antagonists who screams, "I don't ever want to see you around my daughter again!" as he watches his daughter Piper (hottie tomboy Cameron Richardson) begin dating one the movie's main character brothers Trip Carlysle (Mike Vogel). So, there are a couple of positives here, but of course, no one was going to watch this movie anyway so what does it matter? It's certainly not worth your time.