S02E07 - Wild Rebels

Plot

After a fiery crash at a race track sends his entire livelihood up in smoke, a race car driver seeks a new way of life, only to accidentally fall into the company of a biker gang. Known to the police as local robbers but always managing to escape prosecution due to lack of evidence, the biker gang sees the driver as their new wheel man and hope to use his talents in their biggest heist yet.


Movie Review

Well, at least Wild Rebels did not make the same mistake that The Sidehackers did and name itself after the sport that it showcases at the beginning. Beyond that, the film doesn't do much else right, but I have to say that this is not that bad of a movie. Rather, it is merely incredibly generic, showcasing barely any creativity or unique thought from beginning to end.

With both being (essentially) biker films, it's difficult not to compare Wild Rebels to Sidehackers, which aired only a few episodes prior in the second season. And there are a lot of similarities between the two: deranged biker gangs with insane leaders, a bland and unlikable protagonist, a sport superfluously attached to the protagonist to give the illusion of depth, a shallow love interest...and those are just the obvious similarities. If there's any major difference between the two, it's that Rebels doesn't resort to the shock tactic of a brutal rape sequence.

In addition to Sidehackers, the movie also shares a few common moments with another season two episode, Catalina Caper, in that it likes to pad the film with dance scenes and terrible music. Sure, these moments do not appear as frequently as in Catalina Caper, but their presence is jarring enough to disrupt any flow in the paper thin story.

But is there really anything in this film that stands out, that gives it some semblance of a personality? Well, the biker gang, while ridiculously cliched, is also a bit bizarre. The leader speaks like an English major constantly consulting a thesaurus, which is movie logic for suggesting he is somehow intelligent. The two other male members are idiots in their own special ways, and yet the all-intelligent leader sees nothing wrong with them. And the girl...well, she likes to hump anything that moves, apparently, and her silly addiction to committing crime for "kicks" is nothing more than a flimsy excuse for lazy writing.

Oh, and I have to give props to the score composer who came up with the typewriter-esque song that plays whenever the gang commits one of their heists. Why? Because it's insanely goofy, which fits these moronic bikers to a T. Sadly, that's the only notable film score piece in the entire movie, as all the other songs, vocal or otherwise, are either unmemorable or horrible.

I hate writing about these types of movies, because they give so little to really work with. Wild Rebels is nowhere near the worst film ever made, but its lack of effort and poor craftsmanship make it little more than a generic piece of cinema destined for the trash heap. And in any case, it's still better than The Sidehackers.


MST3K Review

After two fun episodes, Joel and the bots seem to be on cruise control with episode, as the jokes didn't hit the high level of quality as often as before. Perhaps the film's status as a not-bad-but-not-good movie didn't give them much to work with. Yes, there were some excellent laugh out loud moments, but they were not as frequent as I would've preferred.

Regardless, the folks of MST3K seem to be comfortable in their more rapid-fire method of delivery in their riffs, which means it only takes one truly bad movie for them to find their mojo once more.