Rad

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.

It's your basic "High-school dork beats bully & gets girl using his worthless social-outcast skill that everyone in this little universe is oddly obsessed with" (happens all the time in the 80's). Nothing particularly original or interesting about it, but for some reason it withstands repeated viewings and still seems like fun. It's one of those movies that unintentionally became a cult flick just by being so straightforward.

The plot, the acting, the characters, the one-liners . . . everything about the production is reasonably serviceable for the era, but certainly not GOOD either. The whole thing feels sorta like a cheesy 80's sitcom doing its big 2-hour episode for sweeps week, and the network gave it some money for a real location shoot & some extra cuss words.

The bicycle stuntwork in "Rad" is stellar. Yes, of course it's outdated now, and modern X-games riders like Dave Mirra can demonstrate a lot more technical skill on multi-directional spins & stuff, but ultimately that's beside the point. In real life the average 13-year-old spends weeks teaching himself to do a decent bunny hop. And for that 13-year-old, it's plenty of fun watching a character in "Rad" just trying to learn an (outdated) backflip move in the schoolyard using a hockey helmet & some old bed mattresses. (Think: "Jackass" but not so intentional. And it's too bad this movie was made before the era of "goof reels" during the end credits, because they probably got some real whoppers on film during this production.)

I can quote every line of this movie, but I still can't put my finger on what aspect of it makes it hold up so well. It's got that same sort of odd quality that a "Duck Tales" or a "Saved by the Bell" episode has: You can't explain why on earth you're still watching & enjoying it as an intelligent adult . . . but you are. (And so is everyone else you've shown it to.) Either way you'd better get your insider-status and enjoy this movie now. Next thing we know they might put it on T-shirts at Sam Goody & take all the fun out of it.

This movie is a cult favorite among anyone who spent their summers riding their bikes or skateboards, and featured a killer soundtrack, not to mention a respectable cast considering the obviously low-budget. Very hard to find on VHS and not likely to warrant a DVD release this is a seldom seen piece of 80's movie history. Whatever anyone else might say I liked this film and anyone I have talked to that remembered it liked it too.

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.

Like so many other kids my age (being 22 now) I saw this one and I also got my first BMX shortly after that! I have been looking everywhere for this one, but just couldn't find it until recently when I imported it from USA in a DVD-edition - however, it looks like an illegal copy since the cover had been copied (in color, though) and the picture on the disc was a sticker, the sound was really low (maybe it had something to do with the fact that it had been converted directly to DVD from VHS?), it had no extra-material and the menu looked like someone had done it on a PC and then burned it... Anyway, the film was just as Rad as I remembered it from my young days! All the classic scenes like the paper boy, motorcycle cop chase, BMX-dance and the Hell Track race were there and together with the (almost cheesy) 1980's-soundtrack they sent shivers down my spine. So if you haven't seen this one, then see it - if you HAVE seen it, then see it again! Money well spent I can assure you.