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This must be one of the most misleading titles for a film. Title aside, this is a wonderfully old-fashioned, uplifting and charming flick that's sure to win over all by the true Grinches. The motorbike races are kickin', but this film is more about the old man with greasy hands who won't give up on his dream. Anthony Hopkins just gets better with age.

Sorry about the bad movie I checked it out for real and it is not that bad

The most wonderful "feel good" movie that I have seen in a long time. Tony Hopkins portrayal of Burt Munro is truly wonderful. His accent and mannerisms are perfect. It is so obvious that he loved doing this movie and he well deserves an Oscar!! :up:

Fascinating look at "down under" and at 1960s America. A little cliche, a little sappy but hey it's a movie.

Anthony Hopkins was great - a prefect vehicle for a great actor and also nice to see a person acting his age and not attracting under-age women as dates, etc.

If feel good movies are your thing, this movie will be worth your money.

The story centers around a man whose dream for twenty-five years has been to go to Utah's Salt Flats to race his old Indian motorcycle from the 20's. He's hoping to get it to top 200 miles per hour. However, along the way, things keep trying to prevent him from achieving this goal.

The characters he meets along the road are always helpful, though a bit put off at first by his dreams. Could someone really find so many helpful individuals this easily? I think not, but really, it'd slow the film down too much if he had to spend hours looking for the right person to help him. He ends up befriending a drag queen, a car salesman, and a Native American, to name a few. The Native American gives him a rather interesting cure for prostate troubles that's quite memorable.

Anyway, this film, thankfully, is not centered around a motorcycle race. It's more than that. This is, at its heart, a film about accomplishing one's dream, no matter who or what tries to stop us. It is a film about living life to the fullest, and not giving up, no matter how discouraging things may get.

All-in-all, a grand feel-good time at the movies, but really nothing overly special. By all means, see it. It's just not the most earth-shattering, most inspirational thing to ever come out. It's a good time, though.

Thoughts coming up later.

I'm going to try to avoid writing my usual long rambling review as I've got another unreviewed movie in the queue and the weekend is fast approaching. So here goes.

There really was a 68-year-old man named Burt Munro who travelled from his native New Zealand to the Utah salt flats in the late 60s and set some sort of motorcycle speed record. This movie is based on his life. It might be completely fictional save for that one fact, but that much I know is true.

The movie Munro, played terrifically by Anthony Hopkins, is a wonderful character, an enthusiastic dreamer who takes adversity in stride and just keeps moving towards his goal, not giving a damn what the world thinks of him. Mostly the world likes him, even though they think he's a little nuts. He's got a bad heart, a bad prostate, and very little money, yet he's determined to take his little red 1920 Indian model motorcycle to Utah to race it. It's always been his dream to go really, really fast.

The movie begins with Munro back in his small town in New Zealand, tinkering with his bike from sunrise to sunset and driving his neighbors crazy. The little boy next-door likes to hang around with him acting as his assistant, but most of the townsfolk seem to view him as a delusional old eccentric.

He's also somewhat of a ladies man. We see him using some sort of a lathe to sand down his badly overgrown toenails in preparation for a hot date. Maybe it isn't a lathe. Ok, I don't actually know what a lathe is. But it's some sort of round spinny hand-held power tool. It's actually not such a bad idea. I can see it now: The Sharper Image Toenail Lathe. Beats sending shards of nail shrapnel flying all over the bathroom.

So anyway, not long into the film, Munro scrapes up a little cash and embarks on his trip to Utah, working his way across the sea as a cook on a small cargo ship. He arrives in Los Angeles all green and goofy, the perfect mark for some sort of hustle, but he's almost immediately taken under the protective wing of the desk clerk of the sleazy sex motel he unwittingly checks into, who just happens to be a drag queen with a heart of gold.

But wait, it gets worse. On the way to Utah, Munro has some car trouble and this time he's taken in for the night by none other than a wise old Native American, weather-beaten face, long ponytail and all, who looks kind of like the guy who used to cry in the Keep America Beautiful commercials when someone littered. Until he was replaced by Woodsy Owl. Give a hoot, don't pollute. They don't write 'em like that anymore.

Next up on the quirky character line-up is a lonely old mechanically-inclined junkyard widow who takes Munro to visit her husband's grave and then tells him how much she can use a cuddle. Zounds!

Normally, throwing a bevy of too-colorful characters at me like this registers high on the contrive-o-meter, especially when each one turns out to be more helpful than the next. And it doesn't stop here. Once Munro arrives at the race site, people are popping out of the woodwork trying to help him. He's like the Sara Lee of the salt flats. Nobody doesn't like him. No wait. He's better than that. He's more like the Raymond. Everybody LOVES him.

Do I think Munro's magnetism is exaggerated, that the angel-to-jerk ratio as presented in the film is out of line with reality, and that Munro's meeting a whole string of quirksters just doesn't jibe with the fact that most people are just plain boring as posts? Yes, yes, and yes. And normally, this sort of stuff just ruins a movie for me. But in this film, Munro is such an endearing character, I was able to just shrug off the stuff I didn't like and enjoy the rest.

When I get old, IF I get old, that is, I want to be just like Munro, following my dreams, not being easily deterred by obstacles or naysayers, downplaying my maladies, aging gracefully. I want to be like him but I know I won't be like him because I'm already not like him. I already go all Eeyore at the first sign of difficulty. But I suppose maybe if I start trying to change the way I deal with adversity now, I might not be too insufferable by the time I get old.

Oh, what's the use?

I liked this movie. The title was a little misleading, but otherwise an enjoyable movie.

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