Review of BMX Bandits (1983) by Jake S — 07 Jun 2016

BMX Bandits touted greedily as an "Australian adventure crime drama film", comes off as more of a romp through an asylum as the story flits between bank robbers, a crew of hapless teenagers and a plot that makes Tommy Wiseau's 2003 American independent romantic drama film (hows that for a fucking genre) look like the Shawshank Redemption.

The movie starts with a band of violent bank robbers doing over a bank in 1980's Manly (Sydney, Australia) dressed in a frightening 'three little pigs' motif. Meanwhile two young stooges, PJ and Goose, pop some rudimentary BMX stunts about town eventually having their bikes destroyed by lazy-eyed Judy (played by Nicole Kidman) who is collecting trolleys at Waringah Mall.

In order to pay for new bikes, the 3 idiots team up and rather than asking their rich North Shore parents for new bikes decide to knick a dinghy and search the harbour for cockles to fund their cyclical addiction. The kids end up finding some hot walkie talkies and after selling them get kitted out in some sick Mongoose merchandise.

Problem is the walkie talkies belong to the boss of the bank robbers, a psychopath known only as 'the Boss'. He enlists the help of his two best morons, Whitey and Moustache.

With such an explosive opening, it's hard to believe that this movie is such a bomb. Trying to be too many things at once, it lets the BMX genre down with only one twentieth of the stunts performed in similar movies such as Rad (1986), and not even a single back-flip.