American Flyers

I can't tell you how many times I have seen this movie, but I love it each time. The gist of the movie is simple -- no matter how hard life is, family is first, and sometimes there is more to family than flesh and blood.

Just the way I remember it from my childhood!

Simple, enjoyable entertainment. Racing scenes and soundtrack are great. Some of the characters like the bearded russian with a gut (there are no beards in cycling!) and the Alexi Grewal character are way overdone to the point of unintended humor, but overall not a bad way to spend two hours if you enjoy bike racing. Wish the soundtrack was available. Suspect MacDonalds paid a bit for product placement but adds to the humor for the peanut gallery.

I've watched this movie a number of times over the last few months and I LOVE it !! I recently got back into biking after a few years of recuperating from back and hip surgeries. It has awaken an old desire to get back into amateur bike racing. Costner and Grant make a great brother team by showing that being siblings isn't always easy. Sometimes there are disagreements and butting heads.

Exciting and fast paste yet slow enough for you to keep up and understand what's going on! You really don't have to be a bike racer to love this movie. Great cast filled with emotion and a hint of comedy from time to time; keeping everyone laughing. I highly recommend you watching this. You will definitely leave feeling good! And most absolutely inspired.

Thanks for making American Flyers available, but come on iTunes, how about making Breaking Away available, for crying out loud, it won an Academy Award.

I don't know, maybe it's just because I saw this as a kid in my basement in a suburb of Denver, or maybe because I like cheesy movies from the '80s, but I still really love American Flyers. It's interesting to see Kevin Costner, still a couple of years from mega stardom, playing a character not far removed from his usual movie self...confident, domineering and somewhat ornery. It makes me wonder what happened to David Grant, who fits the bill as the more wistful younger brother. Still, I think, plot cliches aside, there's a lot to have fun with watching American Flyers. John Badham, who's also directed some legitimate classics in Saturday Night Fever and War Games, knows how to combine fun character moments with larger, popcorn movie sequences. Some find the synthesized score cheeseball, but I find it endearing and well-matched to the equally well-filmed bike races. The movie's sort of the equivalent of an AOR radio station with a big Journey power ballad in the middle. While it doesn't actually include "Don't Stop Believin" on the soundtrack, it could, and it makes sense this came out the same year as the wrestling opus "Vision Quest." Bottom line, if you're able to put yourself into that 1985 frame of mind, or just like any movie about cycling, or like me, you were a 12 year-old Rocky Mountain suburbanite when this hit theaters, then throw on REO Speedwagon, chug a lug a root beer, and put this one in. Or if you prefer more critical kudos with your cycling or '80s fare, then yeah, catch Breaking Away, or Back to the Future. As for me, every few years, I'll take me some Badham movie butter, chuckle at Costner's moustache, and even get a little misty-eyed at the theme song. Speaking of which, props to the director for including Chris Isaak, Creedence Clearwater Revival and ZZ Top on the soundtrack...and to all the viewers out there, anyone know what happened to Rae Dawn Chong?

The story is simple, the characters are very simple, the plot devices are all cliches, and in case you have any trouble figuring out what's happening the terrifically cheesy soundtrack anticipates and then spells out everything. Really. Everything. You might notice that many scenes are either in or include product from a well known hamburger chain and that it might start to feel like the entire production is just a commercial for that particular corporate sponsor. What hard core cycling fan wouldn't want to watch that? For the american cycling community there are 2 movies about racing, one known as easily the best and the other as easily the worst. The best one won an Oscar. American Flyers didn't. On the plus side we get to see some real members of the era's peloton riding as extras on steel with toeclips and that's why I gave this 2 stars instead of 1.

I am a bike racer, and I have to say that this is my favorite movie ever. The soundtrack is great, the camerawork is interesting sometimes, and you go away from it feeling great. If you are a bike racer, or if you just enjoy great movies, you need to see this!