DRIVEL: Lowest Common Denominator Cliché Tripe Written for Mooks: An Embarrassment for Stallone

Rating: 2/10 (17 August 2009)

Before I trash this film, I'll suggest if you want a really great film about auto-racing, try "Heart Like a Wheel". 1000% better than this trash.
This movie seems like it was concocted by a boardroom of studio executives going down a laundry list of stereotypical interests of young and relatively uneducated sex-starved males in their late teens and early 20's who live in the outback of culture. They dig fast cars, scantily-clad women, ESPN auto-racing, and the cheapest beer available. They have no style, no culture, and the only thing better than sex is more sex. Oh yeah, and they love to see cars smashed to smithereens in every conceivable way. They're the kind of people whose highest cultural aspirations are "The Man's Show", "Spring Break", and "Survivor". They probably think "Dawson's Creek" and "Beverly Hills 90210" to be way too high-brow. In short, they're mooks. That's for whom this movie was produced. Not you? Better look elsewhere (and please do).
So, the result is: let's put all that stuff into a single movie. Make a ridiculously contrived story (if story it can be called) with lots of cars, young women, car smashes, young women, cars, more young women, more cars, and more car smashes. Oh, did I mention the cars? We'll get Sylvester Stallone to write the script and star, and the director of Die Harder to direct. It'll be a sure hit. How can it miss? All the polling says that males this age love this kind of thing. Cars and sex. We're not here to actually make movies that have a shred of originality. We're here to get kids to pay to go to the movie theatre so we can continue to live in our Beverly Hills mansions and drive our Bentleys. What happens on-screen is largely irrelevant as long as they've paid for their tickets. They can even leave if they want. In the end, we get the dough.
Stallone plays the old racing has-been who has to deal with the young rookie upstart who thinks he's the next thing since Mario Andretti. Of course, long before it happened, I knew the rookie was going to be put in his place by having some terrible race, and the mentor-ship relationship was going to going to kick in where the old guy teaches the new guy. I saw that one coming before I entered the theater. This is movie-by-the-numbers. I'm sure you could pick one up at a hobby store for about $8.00.
And of course there's a cliché manage a trois. Rookie dumps supermodel who then goes out with the current racing champion. Of course the champion is a complete you-know-what. Now the rookie has something to prove to get the model back, especially way from the jerk. Oh brother. Suggestion: What if the rookie dumped the supermodel for the champ? At least that would have been unexpected. But of course that would have gone against everything this movie is about: contrived cliché for the mooks.
All I can say is this: if you're a mook, this is definitely the movie for you. Buy all the cheap beer you want, order 16 Pizza Hut pizzas, and then turn on this movie after you're finished watching ESPN auto-racing. It doesn't getting any better than this. And it won't.