“Rad” is not really a movie, it’s more of a feature-length advert for BMX racing. The bike stunts are impressive but everything else is as clichéd and predictable as possible. This is one of the cheesiest films from the decade that also gave us “Rocky IV” and “Top Gun”.

Cru Jones (Bill Allen) is a wise-cracking paperboy that loves to do tricks on his BMX. When a big racing tournament known as ‘Helltrack’ comes to his town, he wants to have a shot at being the best racer there is. However, he will have to battle against the current champion Bart Taylor and match wits with a sleazy businessman (Jack Weston “Dirty Dancing”).

The characters in “Rad” are extremely bland. Cru is like a cheap knock-off of Daniel from “The Karate Kid”. Lori Loughlin (“Old Dogs”) plays the love interest Christian and she is okay. Talia Shire (“The Godfather”, “Rocky”) plays Cru’s mother. What happened to Shire’s career for her to go from Oscar winners to a film about BMX racing? Jack Weston gives easily the most entertaining performance in the movie as Duke Best. The real heroes of the film are the stunt people doing all the snazzy bike tricks.

I was entertained by the bike stunts, the final race and some of the music numbers but overall, this is a dud sports flick. If you are not a fan of cheesy films then I doubt you will be able to stomach “Rad” because the movie is really just pure cheese from beginning to end. Probably the cheesiest and certainly the weirdest moment in the entire movie involves a school disco dance with bikes. If you ever wanted to see a film about BMX racing then I guess this is the film for you because if nothing else, it does do a great job of showing off the bikes.