The Bike Squad

This film is just okay. It is simplistic and very linear in plot. It is about a boy and his dog (beautiful dog)...boy loses dog...kids help get dog back. I am surprised Richard Gabai (the director) is still getting work directing movies. The direction is all over the place, barely passable.

The kids are fine. The lead kid (Braden Parkes) is an adorable kid and has a lot of heart. The kid who plays the jerk(Graham Spillman) is a one note character.The actor that plays Ryan's Dad (Thomas Garner) is exceptional.

They must have run out of time or money because the end of this film feels thrown together and incomplete. Its a cute film made for a very young (6-7 yr old) audience. All in all, I'd skip it.

Too many movie makers these days either don't know or don't care that the modern child is more difficult to entertain than the kid of yesteryear. Like it or not, they are usually exposed to more at an earlier age and they are going to be too savvy for this kind of fluff.

"The Bike Squad" centers around a pre-teen named Ryan. Ryan's dog is stolen by a couple of bumbling dognappers and it's up to him and three of his new friends to get the dog back. As it turns out, dogs are being snatched up at an alarming rate around town and are being sold by the twosome to an evil researcher.

From that description, you can pretty much guess how everything will unfold. The only possible surprise is when the four kids actually break into a research lab like a pint-sized ALF. The rest of the film is the same old tired cliche of kids who are constantly being let down by clueless adults who don't believe them.

The acting is uniformly awful with the exception of Graham Spillman. As the lead child, Braden Parkes is inoffensive but lacking in natural talent. This is one "boy and his dog" movie that you'll wanna smack on the nose with a rolled up newspaper. 2/10