When I wrote about William Friedkin’s Jailbreakers, I mentioned Robert Rodriguez’s Roadracers and was sure there was a connection between them, that there was a whole series of 50s homage TV movies. I finally found an article on them this time round, as this is also part of the same series, titled either “The Young and the Reckless” (according to my memory and my current TV listings) or (according to that article) “Rebel Highway” (which also rings a bell), by a US cable channel called Showtime (I seem to remember they had something to do with getting Adrian Lyne’s Lolita shown over there so yay for Showtime I guess lol). It seems there were even more of these things made than I thought.

This is the worst of the three I’ve seen so far. It’s a little childish, a little tacky, and a little strange. All these things aren’t necessarily a problem sometimes, but here they mount up too much. There’s a creepy scene with Alicia Silverstone on a frozen lake or something being forced by her boyfriend to strip, and like even though it’s degrading and everything, it kinda oughta be kinky, but it’s not, it’s just creepy and uncomfortable. The soundtrack is full of soundalikes, the main theme is basically “Unchained Melody”, I think this thing was heavily temp tracked.

Having said all that, though, I’ve gotta say I love the idea of this series of movies. It’s just kinda cool to see such varied talents tackle the same genre with the same resources etc, like that article says, it’s like the old studio system. To use the appropriate vernacular, as it were, I dig it. But, I tuned out completely towards the end. I mean, Jared Leto looks dull in this movie, that says it all. I doubt any of these movies matched the insanity of Rodriguez’s Roadracers. You just can’t beat greasy-haired David Arquette (character name of Dude, no less) with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth and one arm on Salma Hayek and the other on the steering wheel. But I’ll save that for the review of that whenever I see it next This one does have one pretty astounding shot towards the end, I’ve gotta say.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 6th, 2005 at 1:48 am in 2 hearts, Movie Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.