Bicicletas Voadoras

BMX Bandits is an Australian story and movie. The local kids who are BMX riders need some cash to buy new bikes after an unfortunate wreck. Three of them in a small boat find a heavy box tied to a rope and submerged, upon confiscating it find it filled with walkie talkies. They figure they can sell them to the local kids to raise some cash.

At the same time a group of crooks had hidden the walkie talkies, special models with a private police band, that they were going to use in a heist. So most of the movie has the crooks chasing the three BMX riders, two boys and a girl, to get the walkie talkies back. As such most of the movie includes slapstick humor and chases through most unlikely places, such as a shopping mall, a Rugby game, a water slide park, a golf course ... in each case narrowly avoiding getting caught. There is also an extended scene at night in a cemetery which didn't really add too much to the story.

So it is just a silly movie, the entertainment value is marginal, maybe mostly for kids. But the reason I watched it is for Nicole Kidman, this is one of her first movies filmed when she just just about to turn 16. For her inexperience she actually does very well in the role and shows the beginning of acting chops which has made her one of the best of her generation.

I found the entire movie on Youtube streaming with no commercials. The movie comes across really well with good cinematography and mostly very vivid colors.

No childhood is complete without a fantastically expensive and frivolous fad, and the BMX bike was one such item - and one which I could even take part in (skateboarding was definitely not for me, as I was incapable of standing on one). Who would have thought that Australia, and the king of ozploitation cinema Brian Trenchard-Smith, would produce the movie to capture the zeitgeist of the colourful bicycles. I first saw this film in 1984 at a film club (basically a small room with a projector and screen, filled with us poor kids, whose parents wanted us out of the house).

Three kids, Goose (James Lugton), P.J. (Angelo D'Angelo), and Judy (Nicole Kidman), spend their summer holidays riding around on their bikes, attempting to get into mischief. They stumble across a box containing walkie-talkies (that's massive pre-mobile phone, communication boxes), that belong to a gang of bank robbers. Once the criminals (crims to use the colloquial term) discover that these pesky kids have "stolen" the items, a hapless pair (Whitey (David Argue) and Moustache (John Ley)), chase the trio around the seaside town, with comic effect.

Of course this is a silly film, it is completely unadulterated fun, and doesn't have the ubiquitous saccharine kids of an American "kids" film, and do not fall prey to the kind of posh-kids found in Enid Blyton's Famous Five stories. The young cast never become annoying, and hold the film together throughout. This is how us kids spent our summer holidays back in the day. Nowadays, children miss out on this sense of freedom, and completely lose out on creating mischief, as parents fear "stranger danger" which has been perpetuated by our "objective" media (thanks for that!). I'm going to end on an appeal: Parents out there, let your kids run free, let them get into trouble whilst cycling with friends in a summer sense of autonomy - if you don't believe me when I state that this will enrich your children, then watch this film and see what happens.

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I went to see BMX Bandits when it first came out with an eleventh birthday party gang of mates. We were mostly BMX fanatics and figured we'd be running out of the cinema pulling pretend stunts on our handy imaginary bikes but alas we'd kinda just wheeled out, a little let down. Cut to many years later and I catch it on saturday afternoon TV and that's when I flip. I was too harsh on the pic as a kid coz i thought it pandered to a younger audience but now looking back on my days as a kid it's got some innocent magic like those british children's film foundation pics. Nicole Kidman is a star and her fellow BMX bandits form a fun team but it's the pursuing criminals that steal the show with their manic and obviously improvised actions and dialogue. And hey, any movie that ends with a flour bomb fight on wheels and a huge explosion of foam [which always renders the baddies useless] it's just gotta be top!

This movie is perfect for a drunken video night at home. Nicole Kidman stars as one of the teenage BMX bandits and a check-out chick at the local supermarket. The kids come across a bunch of stolen walkie-talkies and get caught up with some "nasty" goons. Don't miss the classic going down the Manly waterslides on BMX bikes. Luv Nicole's perm! And the BMX bandits matching outfits! And the goons'"scary" halloween masks!

80's children classic!

A total stinker - but in the "it's so bad it's good" category.

Plus a must see for all those Nicole fans out there.

OK, I'm 54 years old and what am I doing watching a movie like this... Remember how as a kid you liked to watch more adult-themed movies so you could fantasize about what it would be like when you grew up? Well, I sometimes watch a film like this so I can fantasize about what it was like when I was a teenager. It's one of my guilty pleasures. The only thing I don't miss is the teenage angst. Fortunately this movie didn't have too much of that, it was just fun.

The BMX sport which later became a craze was just getting started when I was in high school, and it was interesting to watch here. The film is not Oscar material, and some would consider it a hokey teen exploitation film. Thankfully there was not any noticeable bad language or explicit sex. One reviewer said it fits into the "so bad it's good" category. Maybe, but for me anyway it seems a little better than that.

Also, as an American I found it more interesting to watch because it's an Australian movie. I bought it in a five-movie collection DVD I found in the bargain bin at WalMart, and I wasn't really paying too much attention to who was in it when I popped it in to relax one evening. As I was looking at the girl, I thought, "She looks kind of familiar with her Aussie accent... what the...could it be? It's Nicole Kidman!" Her presence made me keep watching to see how she handled her earliest film role.

The criminals in the movie start off as real badasses, with ominous music playing in the background (which later becomes amusing). A couple of them quickly degenerate into "Home Alone" style bad guys ineptly chasing the two dudes and Nicole all over the city (including going down the tubes of a water slide!). The teenagers could now identify them, and had taken the walkie-talkies (remember them?) the crooks needed to tap into the police band radio frequency to stay ahead of the cops. In the police station there is a police woman who seems willing to be sympathetic to the teens. I thought she was hot. When the chief's back is turned, she bites one of her fellow officer's ears. I envied him.

All in all, I enjoyed this movie, and if you don't expect too much from it, you might also. The scenery is really good to look at, and the sunny seaside city really lifted my spirits. The exuberance of young people having a good time did, too.