It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

When you see the names Lori Laughlin and Talia Shire in the credits, you know you're watching a real gem.I am serious, this movie embodies all things 80. From the name on. First of all, check out the soundtrack. The music by John Farnham "Break The Ice" & "Thunder in Your Heart" and then "Send Me An Angel" by Real Life and "Music that you Can Dance to" by the Sparks are worth watching the movie for alone. Then, consider most of these songs involve BMX sequences or BMX dances!!! Take it from me people, life doesn't get much better than this movie.You got the preppy good, but poor guy "Cru" & the preppy bad, but rich guy "Bart Taylor" and the Bart's ex girl Lori plays and a competition called Helltrack at the end.The best scene in this movie is when Lori Laughlin and Cru start to BMX boogie to "Send Me An Angel" (you'll remember this one from the roller rink) and they interrupt Bart Taylor dancing to "Music You Can Dance To" and Bart with his blonde hair swooshing in front of his face like Tom Cruise in Risky Business says, "You could have at least waited til I was done dancing." Classic.Final word: its a crying shame this movie isn't on DVD, but there's a petition!!!! Go sign it!

OH MY GOSH YES! This movie is not for any wimps of cinema, it's for people who like to hang from helicopter sled's by their own teeth! Well this movie is about BMX life and culture, but that should be real obvious by the title itself. This is a true 80's film. Ninety minutes of countless montages, action, and one extremely sexy dance routine. This film has it all, it has romance, it has mind blowing BMX stunts, it has a great cast, and let's not forget the hair! If i was to go back to the turn of the century and show the people of the past what the future was going to look like, id bring this movie, although it may cause several things to happen including mass hysteria, suicides. They wouldn't live long enough to see this era unfold. Rad would just be a strange word, a passageway to another world, a means to express complex social situations in a short breath. So Cru, the local boy wants to be the best, but in order to be the best you have to Beat the best. Enter-HELLTRACK. This movie teases you with awesome biking throughout, and then hits you in the face with a sledgehammer at the end. The track is awesome, the music throughout is titillating, and any fans of Fred Savage's film "The Wizard" will relish at the sights accompanied by the unforgettable "Send me an Angel" song. I was watching the Wizard one time and this kid walked in during the Send me an angel montage and was cracking on it saying it was the worst song he ever heard. I promptly threw that sack of crack outta my house Immediately, nobody insults that song around me, No one. If i ever get married I'm coming out to the alter while thats playing riding a BMX. So if your looking for love calling heaven above, get on amazon and grab this sucka well they last. Unforgettable, ten stars.

This site has all kinds of information and photos. Probably the best location to everything about the movie. www.themovierad.com I was excited to see some of the original badges to allow helltrack stunt riders entrance to the set. I guess one of the guys in the movie put all of his stuff for everyone to view. There appears to be a decent following of people trying to replicate the bike that Cru Jones rode in the movie. This is the only the main one as he had three, which I learned reading through the site. The cool thing about the site is that they show products from after the movie. Shirts, posters, stuff like that. This whole thing is less about the stars and more about the people influenced by the movie and the stunt riders who were stars in the BMX world. www.themovierad.com

There's an old saying that "you can't go home again", but thanks to the movie Rad, I can go home anytime I want to. It was filmed mostly in my hometown when I was a kid (all but Helltrack itself, which was set up in Bowness Park in Calgary), and re-watching it now brings me back to how excited everyone was at the time. In the movie the town was called Cochrane, and was in some unknown state. In real life, the town is.....you guessed it, Cochrane, which is just outside Calgary, Alberta. And the local kids really were into BMX biking; I remember my godfather's son making a half-pipe as a shop project, and then not being able to get it through the shop door.The high school in the movie really was pre-renovation Cochrane High. The Cobra logo on the gym wall is the real Cochrane High logo (I graduated as a Cochrane Cobra, as did my dad before me). I remember the school freaking out over whether the movie crew would be able to pull off the BMX Boogie scene without permanently damaging the gym floors. The school ended up converting the gym to a library and music room and building a new gym on the opposite side of the school, if I recall correctly thanks in part to the location fees paid.The ice cream shop where Cru catches up to Christian is called McKay's and was Cochrane's one and only tourist attraction at the time. Cru's workplace, the Main Street Snack Bar, was real. It's been also been a café, and a Chinese food restaurant over the years, but it's there. Lucky Penny Pizza was really Cochrane's best (and for a long time, only) pizza place. The building in the background when Cru jumps the car during the parade even housed my mom's office.Best of all in terms of hometown connection, the house that Cru's family lived in in the movie wasn't a set. It was a real house, and it was actually the first house my parents lived in after they got married.Cochrane had a population explosion shortly after this movie was made, and has grown to the point that most people who've seen Rad would never recognize the town now. For example, there's no longer an empty field opposite the sawmill, and the field Cru and Christian ride into on the hill above the town is now home to a huge subdivision of condos. It's not a small town anymore, and the small town feel is long gone, but when I watch Rad I see my hometown the way it was when I was a kid, and it makes me smile.