80s movies were full of kiddie adventure flicks. Here’s another one, but this time it’s from Australia. They’ve got all the same synthesizers on the soundtrack and corny jokes as everyone else.
I don’t think I saw this when I was a kid. If I had, I probably would have loved it. I also might have gotten permanent scars trying to do bicycle tricks afterward (despite the “don’t try this at home” warning in the closing credits) and nurtured a crush on a then-unknown, tall, redheaded actress named Nicole Kidman.
Seeing it today, it’s a time capsule piece of a period when a Mongoose BMX with pastel blue tires was hot stuff. Skilled genre director Brian Trenchard-Smith keeps things feather-light. The kids here are broke and down-and-out, but never short on wisecracks. Nobody seems to have parents, but there’s plenty of wide open blue sky and Sydney surf. Our three heroes—PJ, Goose and Powder Puff—accidentally stumble onto a criminal gang’s stash of stolen police radios and now they’re being chased by creeps and they don’t know why. They think they just found some pretty good walkie-talkies, worth selling to all of their friends. From there, the action keeps roaring with chases along city streets, beaches and even a cemetery, with cameras mounted right next to furious bicycle tires. It looks like fun to run for your life.
Most memorable is the pursuit through a winding amusement park water slide (pre-dating the water slide scene in The Goonies by a few years). Every kid loves a water slide. I’m 73 years old and I still love a water slide.