Brothers K. C. (Steve Howey) and Trip Carlyle (Mike Vogel) are brothers working menial jobs as pool cleaners while also competing in motocross races. While K. C. is serious minded about supporting himself and his brother, Trip is prone to brash impulsiveness and bad decisions that K. C. often has to deal with. Following a motocross race wherein Trip slides into K. C., the duo attract the attention of the head of motorcycle manufacturer Clay Sparks (Robert Carradine) who hires K. C. to run as a blocker for his son and star racer Rowdy Sparks (Channing Tatum). This ends up putting a wedge in K. C. and Trip's relationship.
First announced in December 2002, Supercross was one of the first projects announced from Tag Studios, a joint venture between Backstreet Boys and N'Sync producer (and convicted fraudster) Lou Peralman and producer of third rate children's media Steven Austin. The movie when announced while American popular culture was still running high on the "extreme" fad brought about by various extreme sports with Motocross no exception. Eventually released in August 2005, the movie was released during a lull in consumer interest in extreme culture with failures such as Torque and Biker Boyz derailing momentum caused by The Fast and the Furious and xXx and the movie was given the minimum amount of theaters for a wide release and opening far outside the top 10 and going largely ignored by moviegoers. What critics bothered to watch the movie complemented the bike stunts but were unimpressed by the thin characters and plot. Supercross is best viewed as a relic of the mid 2000s because as a movie its an anorexically thin exercise with thin characters and plot.
While the movie tries to establish K. C. and Trip as a broken family struggling to survive in the absence of a deadbeat biker father, don't expect too much development on that front because the movie doesn't really care about that and is more interested in the "extreme" parts of motocross at the expense of any real reason to care. Both Steve Howey and Mike Vogel are good actors and have shown it, but here there's very little for either of them to dig into with barely developed love interests for both of them and a wedge issue that doesn't carry the weight it should. The one actor who tries to elevate this material is Robert Patrick who functions as something of a surrogate father figure for Trip and while it's slightly better development than most of the other characters it also feels like it isn't given the breathing room it needs. Per the film's title, the movie features wall to wall motocross footage but even at only 75 minutes total runtime the novelty of these races wears out fast especially when there's no real character, investment, or stakes. The best sports movies are stories that use the sport as a backdrop for overcoming the odds or going through some personal development and you never really feel engaged in the same way you would from other sports movies. As hokey as the Hal Needham film Rad was back in the 80s, it was a more memorable and passionate filmmaking experience than Supercross which feels like a Mountain Dew ad crossed with a motocross promo. It's not the worst relic from this time as there's the bare bones of something that might work unlike Extreme Ops, but you still need actual meat on those bones.
Supercross might appeal to the hardcore motocross faithful, but for anyone else there's really not all that much here unless you're looking for a clunky time capsule of mid 2000s excess.
