Motorama
Release: January 13, 1993

A ten year old boy gets tired of life with abusive parents and cashes in his piggy bank and steals a Mustang. He rides off into a surreal America playing "Motorama," a game sponsored by Chimera Gas Company. He has various encounters with different people, and eventually reaches the Chimera Gas Company where he finds they are not playing by the rules of the game. The character of Gus is a difficult one to fall in step with. Jordan Christopher Michael is neither appealing nor obnoxious in the role and MOTORAMA is not a film for kids, so he is expected to act and talk like an adult - so much so that you begin to think that the part of Gus could just as easily be played by an adult. So why make the central character ten years old? He's too savvy for this road trip to be treated as a learning exercise and is resourceful enough to get along without the support of adults (mostly, they're only a hindrance). The only 'juvenile' element of his character is his obsession to collect game cards. The decision to make Gus ten years old makes some sense in the final scenes of the film, which indicate that the alternate universe idea has been expanded into an alternate future. Instead of a drowning man seeing his life flash before his eyes, a drowning boy sees his future flash before his eyes and the opportunity to change it has been implanted in his mind. At any rate, Gus's life seems predestined. The open road, a Mustang, and a gas-station game called Motorama: these all point the direction his life is to take. And with a name like Gus, you'd pretty much expect him to wind up a pump jockey. It's a future that would suit him fine - after all, consider the alternatives we've been witness to in the previous hour and a half.

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