Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
The pain is already in full swing for Foywonder this year, and he wouldn’t have it any other way. I may be a li’l late posting this, but his reviews are always so much fun that I don’t mind, and I’m sure you won’t, either.
SPOILER WARNING!!!
If EXTREME OPS was a prime example of half assed MTV-style filmmaking then BIKER BOYZ is a prime example of half assed BET-style filmmaking. Adding to the mediocrity is the film’s identity crisis. It can’t decide if it wants to be a mindless, testosterone-filled racing flick or a thoughtful drama about a boy who wants to be a man and a man who needs to stop acting like a boy. BIKER BOYZ ends up coming across as the failed crossbreeding of the X-Games and a BoyzIIMen video. This proves to be the movie’s deathblow because what you’re left with is an extremely tedious melodrama about a bunch of dick waving adrenaline junkies that is neither compelling nor exciting.
Based on a magazine article, which is almost always a bad movie guarantee unto itself, BIKER BOYZ explores the Southern California subculture of African-American motorbike gangs. It would be nice if the movie actually bothered to tell us anything about this subculture. They exist. They get together and have illegal bike races for money. They all have matching jackets with their gang’s name on it. They love their bikes, their women, their tattoos, and their liquor. The female members love their bikes, their men, their tattoos, and their liquor. Almost every biker has a nickname that sounds more like a character from a Def Jam version of American Gladiators.
That’s about it.
The majority of the yawn-inducing plot focuses on a kid named Jaleel who goes by the nickname Kid. ANTWONE FISHER’s Derek Luke does his best impression of a brooding Mekhi Phifer while playing Kid. His dad, played by Eriq La Salle with a RAIN MAN-like gleam in his eyes, is the mechanic for Smoke, who is the head of the most prominent gang called the Black Knights. Smoke himself is known as the “King of Cali” and is the man everyone is aiming for. Laurence Fishburne plays Smoke in an utterly thankless role. I can only guess that when given the option of taking the red pill or the briefcase full of cash he opted for the money. After dad is tragically killed on the sidelines during a racing accident, Kid, who had been a prospect for the Black Knight’s gang, sets out to dethrone Smoke. Unfortunately, you can’t just challenge the “King of Cali” without being a member of a gang and earning your way up the ladder. I wasn’t aware that illegal street racing had a ranking system.
Kid takes a cue from the movie RAD and decides to go into business for himself by forming his own gang called “Biker Boyz.” In addition to using a “Z” in place of the letter “S,” they also have their name spelled in Japanese on their jackets for added coolness. The Japanese spelling on the jackets combined with their trademark yellow and black colors lead one to suspect that they may also be huge fans of Japanese wrestling superstar Toshiaki Kawada. Or not. It seems like the only qualification to join the Biker Boyz is that you must be able to ride a motorcycle or a four-wheeler, be under the age of 25, and look like either an underwear model or a potential cast member of The Real World. Kid founded the group with his two best friends. One has hair that looks like what would happen if Don King unsuccessfully attempted to grow an afro and the other is played by Roswell’s Brendan Fehr, who seems to be doing his impression of a late 80’s Keanu Reeves after being shot with a tranquilizer dart. Kid’s Biker Boyz begin racking up wins left and right but that’s not enough for Kid as he also encourages them to run scams to swindle other bikers out of even more money. I think the screenwriters forgot that we’re supposed to be rooting for these guys to succeed and not thinking they’re a bunch of obnoxious punks.
Along the way, Kid strikes up a relationship with Tina, a tattoo artist. I’ve never seen a tattoo artist that didn’t have any tattoos and since she spends most of the movie dressed like a hooker you certainly get to see most of her non-tattooed body. Not since Sarah Michelle Geller portrayed the world’s most emaciated gourmet chef in SIMPLY IRRESISTABLE has their been such gross miscasting. The whole romantic subplot with these two feels like something the studio insisted on being tacked on to appeal to the females in the audience. Making it all the more unbearable, Kid and Tina have zero chemistry together and their whole relationship seems predicated on the two of them being good looking.
Smoke also has a love interest named Queenie, played by Lisa Bonet. Perhaps played is too strong a word. Lines are recited and facial expressions are made but acting is not what Miss Bonet is doing. She looks utterly bored. Can’t say I blame her.
Orlando Jones also turns up as Soul Train. He’s a lawyer by day and a Black Knight by night. He’s Smoke’s right hand man and also acts his personal ring announcer of sorts. Envision a slam poetry version of Paul Bettany’s character in A KNIGHT’S TALE and you get the idea. Other than that, he has little to do.
Kid Rock, who looks more and more like a white trash Sebastian Bach with every day that goes by, shows up as Smoke’s #1 rival, Dogg. Like Lisa Bonet, he too recites lines and makes facial expressions but at least he actually makes an effort.
Djimon Hounsou shows up as a biker named Motherland who is essentially Djimon Hounsou with tattoos. There isn’t much in the way of depth to most of the characters in this film. Several other recognizable faces also show up in various roles that give them little to do other than collect a paycheck. We’ll just move on.
Getting back to the plot, Kid gets busted for street racing and his overprotective mom threatens to kick him out of the house unless he stops. He vows to quit but we know he doesn’t mean it. The character of the mom is one of the most poorly written characters I’ve seen in a movie in quite sometime. She’s constantly saying and doing things that are totally contradictory and none of this is ever brought up. For example, despite the fact that mom doesn’t want him getting involved with the same element that killed his father she still doesn’t have any problem getting all dolled up and joining her son at the Black Knight’s annual big dance. Yeah, the biker gang holds an annual dance as if they are the Kiwanis Club or something. They also hold charity events like a bikini carwash where all the proceeds go to fight illiteracy. Hopefully the writers of this script will get the help they need. Oops, it was for illiteracy, not idiocy. My mistake.
BIKER BOYZ officially jumps the shark when mom tries to get an apathetic Smoke to help her get her son out of the biker lifestyle by revealing to him that Kid is actually his son. Neither Kid nor Smoke is happy about this shocking revelation. If I actually gave a damn about this movie or anyone in it I would probably be annoyed by such a hackneyed cliché being pulled out of the screenwriters’ asses in order to try to spice things up. I know this happened about an hour into the movie because I checked my watch just a few minutes earlier to see how long it had been. It felt like it had been almost two hours but had only been about 55 minutes. BIKER BOYZ clocks in at an insufferable 110 minutes, which is absolutely uncalled for. It feels twice that. For the record, the man behind me let out a gasp in absolute shock when Smoke finds out he’s really Kid’s dad. That was the most entertainment I got out of this whole movie-going experience.
So anyway, the movie goes into full soap opera mode for the remainder of the film. Smoke begins to reexamine his life. Kid continues on his quest to be the “King of Cali.” More romance. More races. More musical montages! It all culminates in the big race between Kid and Smoke with the added stipulation that the loser has to quite racing. I won’t give away whom the winner is because how it all plays out would take too much explaining and frankly I’m just not in the mood. Yes, the ending is so lame that even the guy who wrote 8,000 words on HALF PAST DEAD just doesn’t have to patience to go into details. It just radiates the same kind of “Who Gives A Shit?” factor that the ending to THE KARATE KID III did.
BIKER BOYZ ends at the finish line where father and son have a heart to heart talk before one rides off into the sunset leaving the other to celebrate. Despite the fact that this was the big race even the other bikers had been wanting to see and every other race in the movie has had bikers lined up along the side of the road all the way to the finish line, this one takes place on an empty dirt road and nobody is waiting at the finish line. They do all come driving up after the race having been kind enough to wait until the two had that father-son talk. Have I mentioned how much this movie sucked?
Oh, what about the racing scenes? After all, that is what this film should have been about, right? Well, they’re dull, generic, and utterly lacking in excitement. The races are filmed in a manner mostly using close-ups of the people on the bikes or of the front tires or P.O.V. shots of how the riders see things. There is generally no sense of velocity and it is hard to get excited about who’s going to win when the race is filmed in a manner where the audience isn’t really given any perspective into the logistics of the race itself. The only interesting scene involving the bikes is this one scene where the Biker Boyz are driving down the freeway at night and doing these stunts where they hang off the side of their bikes with metal strapped to the soles of their feet. The reason I found this entertaining is because I expect to hear something in the news any day now about some idiot getting killed while trying to recreate this stunt.
Another annoying thing is Laurence Fishburne’s tunnel vision. A big deal is made out of the fact that Smoke “enters the zone” and develops this uncanny tunnel vision where he is focused 100% on the finishing line. This is shown to us using optical effects that make everything that isn’t directly ahead of him blurred. It all comes across as some stupid superpower. Do the X-Men have a spot for a guy who possesses the power of Coke bottle vision?
Everyone keeps comparing this movie to THE FAST & THE FURIOUS. I, however, cannot make that comparison because I have never seen THE FAST & THE FURIOUS. Some people like the movie. Some people hate movie. I just thought it looked like a feature length Mountain Dew commercial and decided to not even bother. Still, it has to be more entertaining than BIKER BOYZ. In fact, the success of THE FAST & THE FURIOUS seems to have created a whole new subgenre. I’m not sure this is a good thing. Up next is Ice Cube’s biker flick TORQUE, which from advance word doesn’t aspire to be an earnest drama. THE FAST & THE FURIOUS’ sequel, 2 FAST 2 FURIOUS, which may very well be the most pretentious title in movie history, opens in theaters this summer. Also this summer, shooting is supposed to begin on R.P.M., which from what I read sounds like THE FAST & THE FURIOUS’ EUROPEAN VACATION. And then there’s a speedboat version of THE FAST & THE FURIOUS in development that Renny Harlin’s name was attached too. Topping it all off was the announcement this past week of a big-screen HOT WHEELS movie. This is just getting ridiculous! I assume Matchbox cars and Tonka trucks will get their own films if HOT WHEELS is a hit. I’m already hard at work on my own script for a kiddy version of THE FAST & THE FURIOUS called BIG WHEEL: THE MOVIE. At the rate things are going I should be able to get a six-figure deal for it. You better not steal my idea, Moriarty! Hopefully whatever comes along next in this particular subgenre won’t be as lame as BIKER BOYZ was. If nothing else, I hope they don’t load it with made-for-television level melodrama. Perhaps a more appropriate title for BIKER BOYZ would have been THE FAST AND THE RESTLESS since it is more of a soap opera than a racing movie. And Lord knows I was restless watching this snoozefest. As far as rip-offs of blockbusters go, BIKER BOYZ is to THE FAST & THE FURIOUS what MAC & ME was to E.T.
The Foywonder
As always, I appreciate it, man. No one takes the hit for the team quite the way you do.
"Moriarty" out.
