Supercross (2005) review

Dir. Steve Boyum

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★

There was a time in the late nineties/early aughts where if something was “extreme,” or marketing as such, it had to be cool. Skateboarding was all the rage. Jackass was eminently popular. As a kid, I knew I was staying up way past my bed time if WCIU-TV in Chicago was airing Whacked Out Sports. That doesn’t even account for the highly publicized X-Games at one point finding a home on local television around the same time.

I remember devouring the “Tempo” section of the Chicago Tribune when I was about nine-years-old, seeing advertisements for Supercross: The Movie. It didn’t trip my trigger then, but now I’m older, with agency, and have access to countless movies, and at less than 80 minutes long, it seemed like a reasonable thing to watch. I’ve already been on a strange motorcycle movie kick this week, having watched (and more-or-less enjoyed) the Laurence Fishburne-led Biker Boyz and Joseph Kahn’s Torque.

With Supercross, my ride has sadly come to a screeching halt. The most memorable attribute of the seldom-seen movie? The end credits song, “Every Time” by Rusty Truck, will live on my phone forever. I even went the extra mile to download a picture of the movie poster to supplement the song’s artwork, so I’ll remember where I heard it.

This is a dour picture; a brainless, charisma-vacuum that serves as an overlong advertisement for the AMA Supercross Championship. All over the country, motorcyclists take to the dirt in souped-up Hondas, Kawasakis, Suzukis, and more to perform death-defying, heart-pounding swerves and leaps. Is this, or the rodeo, the greatest show on dirt? That would be a fun argument to start at your local dive bar.

The film centers around brothers K.C. (Steve Howey) and Trip Carlyle (Mike Vogel), young Supercross racers who spend their days cleaning pools so they can spend their nights on their bikes. Early on, it’s established that K.C. is the better rider than Trip, which doesn’t bother him until his brother starts getting exclusive sponsorships. Sure, they both have love interests (Sophia Bush and Cameron Richardson), but that doesn’t quell tensions. The only thing that will calm the waters between the two alphas is if Trip mans up and accepts his role as K.C.’s coach, which, after one or two brotherly shoves, he does with little resistance.

The rest of the movie is essentially a lengthy montage of Supercross stunts with the occasional familiar face turning up. Aaron Carter is a fellow racer, who has fewer lines than one of the choruses to his songs. Robert Carradine plays one of the racing managers, and a young Channing Tatum plays a biker kid named Rowdy who enjoys referring to himself in the third person. Tatum unintentionally earns one of the biggest laughs in the movie when he tells a married woman with whom he’s flirting that her wedding ring “doesn’t mean much” to him like it does her.

Supercross is so lazily bad that it makes me want to recommend a film to which I gave a mediocre review. That film came seven years later, and is called Nitro Circus: The Movie. It’s an adaptation of the MTV series of the same name, and at least features authentic stunts and doesn’t bore you with derivative character-work. If you’re reading a review of Supercross 20 years after its release, you undoubtedly take interest in the realm of extreme sports. You at least deserve something half-compelling, which is more that can be said for this cheap, product placement-laden vehicle — the biggest surprise is we didn’t get a lame, licensed video game adaptation from THQ.

Starring: Steve Howey, Mike Vogel, Sophia Bush, Cameron Richardson, Robert Carradine, Aaron Carter, and Channing Tatum. Directed by: Steve Boyum.