Flyin' Ryan

A delightful and insightful film that will enthrall children of all ages. I watched this wonderful flick with my daughter Hayley and she couldn't look away or stop giggling. I've lost count of how many times she re-watched the dvd since we first brought it home. Rarely does a small independent film touch the heart as well as FLYIN RYAN. Set in a small town filled with great kids and funny animals, the fantastic story is almost universal and will engage even the youngest of viewers. And it's so rare to find a children's movie that doesn't speak down to them or cater to baser interests with off-color jokes. I totally recomend this beautiful warm-hearted picture to everyone and their families.

Flyin' Ryan is one of those movies that you occasionally see and you just can't tell if the movie is trying to be serious or if it's just one big joke. From the opening scene to the ending credits, I was laughing so hard because this movie is just AWFUL! The actors in this movie are inexperienced and it shows. No wonder! According to the biographies in the "special features", the most acting they've done is community theater.

I was trying to pin-point the bad things in the movie, and there are just too many. There's not much left to be said that hasn't been said here already.

The story is about a mom and a 12-year-old boy, Ryan, who move to the country with their loony aunt who's hobbies are weed whacking in the middle of the night and dumpster diving.

Ryan goes into town to make some friends, but Dirk and his gang of skateboarding meanies decide they don't like Ryan's face and push him into a lake that's obviously shallow yet somehow, Ryan can't stand up until his future friend, Nicki, falls in the water as well.

They become fast friends but what's not to like about a girl that knows all the capitals of every country who has twin siblings (not identical, silly!) that know baseball stats?

When I first started watching this movie, I assumed Ryan would be flyin' throughout the entire movie. Silly me! The title implies that Ryan flies, and he does, but it's hardly the main point (if there IS a point) of the movie. He flies about four times -- once over a huge ravine whilst escaping the vile Dirk, once to show Nicki is AWESOME!new skillz, once across the lake to save his raccoon-slash-dog Theo from a seemingly abandoned gold mine/nuclear power plant, and once more across the lake after a successful rescue mission. I'm not sure how it could be unsuccessful when he has technological advances such as ropes that he whips out while escaping Dirk and his overtly stupid cousin.

There are a bunch of random nature scenes as well. There's a nice shot of a deer and several scenes featuring extremely fascinating ducks. They're entirely too incongruous. Do they tie into the movie? No!

And neither do scenes like the one where they visit Nicki's cousin and go swimming in her pool so Nicki can teach Ryan how to swim (this new found skill never comes in handy again, so what's the point of even teaching him if he's not going to out-swim his foes?) and her cousin can fix his Heelys (they never mention him getting them back, so I assumed he never did, until he whipped them out later ...). There's also the karate master that jumps over a motorcycle. He's pretty awesome because not only can he teach karate lessons in the middle of the road, he can also catch stray tennis balls! Will he ever cease to amaze?

There's the intense scene in the hospital when Ryan attempts to deliver Theo to his aunt in the hospital. A police man starts chasing Ryan but gives up. He is soon followed by nurses/doctors who yell "NO DOGS! NO DOGS!" but luckily Ryan has a nurse for a mother and she somehow convinces the doctor to let the dog stay in the hospital. ("NO DOGS!" "What dog?" "OOOH... ALRIGHT! -sly grin-" I seriously could go on and on about how awful this movie is.

I tried telling my friend about this movie and I just couldn't run out of strange scenarios that came from this movie.

This movie was a complete waste of time and money. It provided me with a few laughs, but only because I simply could not believe that I found this movie, let alone it was actually MADE.

This film was so bad I almost want to give it a ten from all the belly laughing I did through it with the poor acting, bad dialog and special effects I could have done in my toilet.

Here's why I watched it: A friend of mine went to Family Video, approached the counter and asked, "what's the worst movie you have?" The clerk, informing my friend he had never been asked that before, suggested this film. A great suggestion - give this employee a raise. It's as bad as "The Wild and the Free".

The story is that of a boy who moves to a new town with his mother and must face a gang of tough-talking skaters. And he gets help fro ma little girl (the only good part of the film, Geneve Ruppert) and his dead great grandfather, Theodore McGoogan McGwire.

None of the actors have been in films before or since and maybe never will. They're awful. The camera-work looks like a home video most of the time. The "flying" effect is so poor that you can't help but laugh. And the children speak very strangely, with words like "basshole" and "magic transcends logic" (which I'll never hear a 12-year old say). I take back Geneve Ruppert being the only good part. One line from a character about coffee and butt-grabbing was also funny.

Don't rent this film unless you're planning on getting drunk or are intentionally looking to waste your time. Luckily, I was one of these two things.

Let me start by saying, that I had my doubts. I consider myself to be a film connoussier of sorts, however this move was so bad that I had to laugh. In fact, I think it is the best movie that has ever fit into the "so bad it's funny" category. From the bad acting to the ill-formed storyline, this movie tries desperately to make a lot of sense, but fails to do so in every respect. For example, the main character, Ryan, receives a pair of "Heely" shoes (the entire movie it seems, is one, overgrown add for those shoes) from his grandmother. BUT...they have not wheels, so poor Ryan still cannot fit in. That is when he somehow ends up at an isolated store (it is randomly on the shore of some lake), where a mysterious guy dressed in mid-ninteenth century dress from the American West tells him something anectdotal and then takes the wheels off of a model plane and gives them to Ryan. My two favorite scenes however, are the one where a girl randomly has two extra ATVs, and gives them to the bullies giving chase to Ryan, and the time that Ryans small dog is kidnapped by the bully and considered as a candidate for Guard Dog at the bully's cousins guard post at some random processing plant, which Ryan flies out of. If I has all the time in the world, I could not tell you how much this movie sucks, but it sucks really funny.

This movie was filmed in and around my hometown of Kelseyville, CA (small farming community with around 4K people). To the points that many of these actors were terrible and had no experience... well, yeah. They went around and wrangled kids from the high school and asked if they wanted to be in a movie, or so my friends in the movie told me. What high schooler would turn down being in a movie? It was a great way to save money, a terrible way to make a movie. Reading through the cast list brought back some nostalgia but that was probably the most entertainment I got from the movie in any serious capacity. It's a great late night movie to drink and laugh at.

All the criticisms from other reviews are completely valid. It's a terrible movie. It's great entertainment. I'll give it 4 stars because someone went out there and made something despite painfully obvious budgetary limitations.