Rad

There's an old saying that "you can't go home again", but thanks to the movie Rad, I can go home anytime I want to. It was filmed mostly in my hometown when I was a kid (all but Helltrack itself, which was set up in Bowness Park in Calgary), and re-watching it now brings me back to how excited everyone was at the time. In the movie the town was called Cochrane, and was in some unknown state. In real life, the town is.....you guessed it, Cochrane, which is just outside Calgary, Alberta. And the local kids really were into BMX biking; I remember my godfather's son making a half-pipe as a shop project, and then not being able to get it through the shop door.

The high school in the movie really was pre-renovation Cochrane High. The Cobra logo on the gym wall is the real Cochrane High logo (I graduated as a Cochrane Cobra, as did my dad before me). I remember the school freaking out over whether the movie crew would be able to pull off the BMX Boogie scene without permanently damaging the gym floors. The school ended up converting the gym to a library and music room and building a new gym on the opposite side of the school, if I recall correctly thanks in part to the location fees paid.

The ice cream shop where Cru catches up to Christian is called McKay's and was Cochrane's one and only tourist attraction at the time. Cru's workplace, the Main Street Snack Bar, was real. It's been also been a café, and a Chinese food restaurant over the years, but it's there. Lucky Penny Pizza was really Cochrane's best (and for a long time, only) pizza place. The building in the background when Cru jumps the car during the parade even housed my mom's office.

Best of all in terms of hometown connection, the house that Cru's family lived in in the movie wasn't a set. It was a real house, and it was actually the first house my parents lived in after they got married.

Cochrane had a population explosion shortly after this movie was made, and has grown to the point that most people who've seen Rad would never recognize the town now. For example, there's no longer an empty field opposite the sawmill, and the field Cru and Christian ride into on the hill above the town is now home to a huge subdivision of condos. It's not a small town anymore, and the small town feel is long gone, but when I watch Rad I see my hometown the way it was when I was a kid, and it makes me smile.

This film is called Rad, and that's exactly what it is: A truly radical experience. I admit, I did hear about this movie from the Nostalgia Critic's review of it. Then, when I heard the epic song "Break the Ice" and when I heard about how much of an audience it attracted, I decided to check it out... Right at the perfect time, summer of freshman year. I was in for a kick-ass experience.

The film's opening is awesome. It's nothing but dudes on BMX bikes showing off their tricks. Just amazing! After the opening, we get our main character, Cru Jones. He reminds me of Rocky, an underdog who is determined to get something done, despite the odds against him. It's funny to mention Rocky, because Talia Shire (Adrian from Rocky) is in this movie. We also have Aunt Becky from Full House in this movie. Man, what a babe! In the end, everything turns out great.

This movie sure knows how to deliver. It's marketed as a BMX movie, and that's what it gives us. Awesome. It's also inspirational. Before I saw this film, I saw riding my bike as a dead phase of my life. Now, after I saw the movie, I can't get enough of my bike. I like going outside on my bike and trying to do tricks and stuff. It sucks how this movie was only released to VHS. We need this film on DVD. Official DVD, which means that the homebrews out on the Internet don't count. Well, the folks at InHD came to the rescue and released a version of this movie with DVD-like quality, and it was awesome. Notice: I said "was", which means that every copy of this version that was uploaded to YouTube have now been taken down thanks to a false copyright claim by Warner Bros., even though they don't own the movie. Luckily, I caught on early that these were being taken down, so I snagged a copy and saved it to my SD card. Just look at us fans, the extremes we have to go through to get this film out on DVD.

Don't look at this film as a piece of '80s that was only a fad, look at it as Rocky on bikes. Yeah, the music is pretty dated, but that shouldn't matter today, since it seems like all modern movies rely on music from the past to use in their films, but who could blame them? Bottom line, this film was great then and it's great now.

Before the huge X-Games explosion of the late 90s, there was another place where extreme sports thrived; The 80s. Like any fad, there were numerous exploitation movies based on it. Thrashin was the cream of the crop to focus on skateboarding, but when it came to BMX there was a real debate. Was it BMX Bandits or Rad? In my mind, there has never been a doubt. While BMX Bandits is pretty good, it can't even come close to Rad. Likely both films spawned hardcore punk bands named after the movies, and Rad the band is far superior to BMX Bandits. (Although really neither are that great) So what makes Rad so good? To start, the star power: a pre-Full House Lori Laughlin is the love interest of our hero Cru, Talia `stop calling me Adrian' Shire has a great turn as Cru's mom, and veteran character actor Ray Walston is hilarious as a crankity old bike shop owner (`The world would be a lot better off without kids'). The movie also has one of my favorite scummy villains of the 80s, Jack Weston of Dirty Dancing, Short Circuit 2, and Can't Stop the Music (the fictionalized Village People biopic). With a cast this great you know you're in for a treat. The next key ingredient of Rad is the stunts. Instead of hiring BMX stuntmen and only using them for stunts, Rad gives them roles, playing themselves. It is set around a fictional BMX race called `Hell Track' and it draws some of the best riders from around the world. It is always a special treat seeing some of my favorite riders of yore on the screen along with Cru. It gives the movie an authentic feeling. It also has spectacular stunt scenes in the opening credits where they just let the riders do there thing and they really show off their skills which are highlighted by interesting angles and slow motion. Another great thing about Rad is the soundtrack. It's the typical eighties teen targeting soundtrack full of various genres aimed to get kids attention; rock, dance, new wave, even some ballads. They all work though and you'll be humming the tunes long after the movie has stopped. The hit `Send Me An Angel' (which was later used to great effect in the Fred Savage vehicle / Nintendo commercial The Wizard) is especially great and has found its way onto mix tapes of mine ever since the I first bought the soundtrack in 87 with it's catchy, haunting synth line. All in all, Rad is more than just a fun trip down nostalgia lane. Even if you haven't grown up in the 80's or gotten caught up in the BMX craze, it is still a lot of fun. And besides, what other movie do you get to see Ray Walston give the middle finger with such conviction?

Dude, they should have called this film Awesome! or even Totally Rad cause I'm not sure the title Rad is as rad as Rad is. This is way up on my list of must-see films -- it ranks up there with Thrashin', North Shore, The Dirt Bike Kid and The Search for Animal Chin! That hottie, Lori Loughlin, sure knows how to slide down a slide...Anyways, my favorite scene is the BMX dance sequence. We start off with some awesome 80's dance footage that brought back intense (I mean INTENSE) memories. The twins, Rod and Rex do such an amazing number on their date (some broad with slits up the side of her dress) I was wishing I had a twin AND a broad with slits up the side of her dress. This sequence is done to the song "Music That You Can Dance To" by Sparks. As soon as the number ends, Cru and Christian barge in on their rad bikes. The dance is so well choreographed to "Send Me An Angel". Just when you thought it couldn't get better, a disco ball shines its glorious sparkles all over the feisty Cru and Christian.

From a technical standpoint, Rad is radical! The ADR work was so ahead of its time, it sent chills through the industry AND down my spine. Some favorite moments include, "O-KAAAYYY!" "Okay?!" "Oh, kay?" and "I have a pie in my oven... This parade is so un-American!"

Dude, Rad is rad, okay?

'Rad' is more 80's than Ronald Reagan sitting on Arnold Schwarzenegger's shoulders while playing Pac-Man and singing "Beat it". That is not meant as a criticism by the way.

True to the "Can do" zeitgeist of the decade, 'Rad' is an underdog story about a kid who overcomes the odds. Oops, spoiler alert. But come on, you know how these things turn out. It's all about how we get there and how satisfying it is to see our hero succeed.

Said hero is Cru Jones, a likeably bland character who is easy to root for. The villains are all card stock, which is more than okay in these kinds of movies. Again, you want shade, go sit under a tree.

Director Hal Needham ('Smokey and the Bandit') does a good job of capturing all of the BMX action, and the soundtrack--as many 80's soundtrack do--acts as an emotional desktop shortcut for the drama.

This isn't quite 'Karate Kid' on a bike, but if you like that sort of feel good 80's underdog tale, 'Rad' is aptly titled.