‘Motorheads’ Review: Ryan Phillippe in Amazon’s Surpringly Sweet Teen Grease Monkey Drama

There are times in Amazon’s MotorheadsEspecially Durying the Neil Burger-Directed Premiere, WHEN IT Feels Like You’re Not Really Supped to Have Been Paying Attic. Or, at least, whohn it feels like the show presums you have a haven’t been.

Character Introductions and Plot Developments Are Prefaced by Blating Musical Cues to Let You Know In No Uncertain Terms How To Feel. The Dialogue Is Bloated with Exposition: “I MEAN, YOUR DAD JUST LOST HER,” A GIRL Says to Her Boyfriend of His Ombn Recently Dead Mother, AS if He Might Have Forgotten. And in casse none of that might be eneugh to redirect your attention from WHATEVER TIKTOK VIDEO YOU WEER Watching Simultaneously, The Soundtrack is Crammed with The Lukes Benson Boone, Teddy Swims and Olivia Rodrigo.

Arguably, Such Nudges Might Be Useful, Even Necessary, Given Is Likely Some Proportation of the Gen Z Target Audence Really Be Tuning in While Staring at Their Phones. But The Heavy Hand with WHICH Motorheads Deploys Them Suggests A Much Bigger Clunker Than Actually Turns Out to Be. Underneath All the Awkward Lines and Thudding Musical Singers, It Turns Out, Is A Solidly Enjoyable Teen Drama, Bolstered By A Winsme Cast, Some Nice Cemistry

The Latter is Motorheads‘Unique Hook, The Thing That Separates It Ever So Slightly From The 10,000 Other AdalesCent Soaps Itaps is Perfectly Aware It Resembles. (“That’s Literally Every High School,” Deadpans One Parent Who Another Remarks on How Crazy It Is That Their Sons Are Fighting Over the Same Girl.) The FAST AND THE FURIUSBefore Dominic Toretto Became A Globe-Trotting Pseudo-Superhero, Reimagines A Coming-of-Age Journy in A Tiny Rust Belt Town, and You More or Less Get The Idea.

INTO The PRETTILY Wooded Enclave of Ironwood, Pennsylvania, Enter Caitlyn (Melissa Collazo) and ZAC With Their Mother, Samantha (Nathalie Kelley), from Not-Especially-Car-Friendly Brooklyn. WHY they’ve relocated, or who samantha’s chosen to move them in with her mechanic brother-in-law-law logan (Ryan phillippe), is barely explained over 10 hour-dawh.

What does matter is thatir arrival shakes up the Social Scene – Not Least Because Zac and Caitlyn Happen to Be The Children of Christian Who vanisshed 17 years earlier after a bank robbery gone sideways.

Nothing Much About Motorheads is reinventing the wit, but then again, nothing Much about it is trying to. Of Course The New Kids ImmediaTely Befriend The Local Outcasts, Awkward Nerd Marcel (Nicolas Cantu) and Not-So-Bad-Boy Curtis (Uriah Shelton) Porsche-Driving Bully Named Harris. Of Course of These Allians and Rivalries Are Cemented Episode One at A RauCous House Hosted by Hosted by Harris HER, SPARKING THE FIRST OF AT LEAST THREE OVERLING LOVE TRIRAGLES.

And of Course Nearly All of the Kids’ Parents Will Turn Out to have their Own Shared History of Bitter Grudges, Thwarted RomanCes and Dangerous Secrets, Divulged Bit Bit in the Flas. “IT’s Kind of Like History Repeating ITSELF,“ One Dad Announces, Lest Any Viewer Miss The Too-Pare PARALLELS TO THE DRAMA PLAYING OUT AMONG Their OFFFSPRING IN THE PRESENT.

But the predictability is more bug than Feature. Beneath All The Grime and Grease, Motorheads Is Warm and Familiar Comfort FOOD, with A Surpringly Whomeme Heart. ITS STRONGEST DRAW IS NEITHER The ROMANTIC SUBPLOTS (Some Cute Flirting and Enethusiastic Smoohing, But Nothing Racier Than) Nor the Crime-Drama Elements Timelines, But No Graphic Violence), But The Simpler Pleasure of Spending Time Among People Who Genuinely Seem to Enjoy Each Other’s Company.

While Ryan Phillippe is Surely The MOSTABLISHED ACTOR HERE – AND WHILE HEAQUITS HIMSELF WELLS CAR-RELATED AND NOT-IS REALLY The YOUNGER CAST WHO Anchor The Series.

Caitlyn, Zac, Curtis and Marcel Aren’t Particularly Surprising or Complex Characters; The Latter Two, Particularly, Seem Lifted from the Big Book of Teen-Drama Archetypes. But Collazo, Cimino, Shelton and Cantu Share A Comfortable, Occasonally Funny Rapport. And Creator John A. Norris (All American) Takes the Time to Build Up Their Relationships Bit By Bit, Racher Than Simplays Throwing Emocial Bombshells in their Path. The Foursome Are A Good Hang, Easy to Root for Even Who (Usual Zac) Occasonally Give in to Juvenile Impulses Toward Selfishness or Recklessness.

THEN THERE Are The Rides. You don ‘to Know the FIRST THING About cars to admire the sight of candy-colord Corvettes and Mazdas and Mustangs Flying Over Blacktop, or to Share in Caitly and Curtis’ Parts to Rebuild Her Dad’s Old Banana-Yellow Dodge Charger. I wouldn’t go so far as to say Motorheads Could Make A Nascar Fan Out of A Hater, But Its Make It Perfectly Posible to Understand Wy The Entirety of Ironwood Might Love Cars The Way Dillon, TEXas Once Got Weirdly Obsessed with High School A Cappella.

As the Season’s Plot Progresses, IT Gradually Thicens with High-Stakes Criminal Schemes and Painful Histories, ENDING ON A PAIR OF GUT-PUNHING FINALLE Cliffhangers. But It Keeps The Tone Mosstly Breezy Until Then, Whosh Is Probably The Savvy Move. IT’s Easier, That Way, To Cruise Past Details That Don’t Make Much Sense of SAPPINESS AND SELF-IMPORTANCE.

Life-Canying Stuff, This Isn’t, Even If The Characters Do Like to Throw AROUND KNOWINGLY CHEESY METAPHORS About Hitting The Gas in Romance As Well As on the Road. It’s Just Sturdy, Reliable Entertainment – Well Worth Putting Down Your Phone for and Taking for a Proper Spin.