Bike Trainer movie review – “Columbiana” and “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”
I give it 3 out of 5 bicycles! 
As I am in my winter training I have to spend hours on the bike trainer and need to be distracted. I have tried reading and listening to podcasts or music but the best distraction is to set up my laptop and fire up a movie.
It just can’t be any movie. It has to be a movie that is full of distraction. You aren’t going to want to think a lot or have to pay attention to complex dialog and cinematography. This isn’t film class. This is the bike trainer. No foreign films with subtitles.
No, what I’m looking for is explosions, gratuitous violence and over-the-top CGI. No subtleness need apply.
Two recent movies I’ve spun up are “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” and “Columbiana”. Both of these had may have been in theatres, but I don’t remember. All I know is that you can rent them from a kiosk at the grocery store for a buck and change.
I would have totally hated having to sit through the silly ape movie with its strange humanzees at the cinema. I’m jaded by a love of the original 70’s kitsch. But, here on the small screen the “Computerized Monkeys Gone Wild” video was perfect for forgetting the lactic acid in my quads. You could turn off the sound completely and follow 98% of the plot.
Besides being unbelievable and ridiculous, the only real drawback was the intervening dialog between action sequences and a paltry run time of just over 1:30.
The next ‘feature’ I enjoyed was “Columbiana”. Another excellent action flick with no plot. Actually it had the same drug-lord revenge plot as 123,453 made-for-TV-movies, most of the original Miami Vice, and Crocodile Dundee. Plenty of skin tight eye candy for the guys with explosions and chase scenes galore!
I can’t buy this slightly built model-esque lady as being a bad-ass super killer. She looks like you could breathe on her and she’d fall down. Why not use one of my lady triathlete friends in these movies? They’d be beautiful and bad-ass and believable.
Trainer too loud to hear the dialog? Not an issue here. You’ll still be able to follow along. And at a sloppy 2+ hours this one will get you through your long ride.
Frankly neither of these movies is worth wasting time on unless you’re trapped and in pain. What they are good for is distraction. Save the chick flicks and classics for a couch snuggle and queue up the gratuitous distraction for the pain cave.