MOVIE REVIEW : ‘8 Seconds’: This True Rodeo Story Lacks True Grit : ‘Rocky’ director John Avildsen brings to the screen the life of champion bull-rider Lane Frost.

If only the filmmakers responsible for “8 Seconds” (general release) were half as good at riding the bull as their rodeo hero Lane Frost. It’s an inspirational bio-pic without a trace of inspiration.

Frost--played here by Luke Perry--was the youngest world champion bull-rider ever, before he died in a rodeo accident in 1989. (The end credits feature clips from his career.) He had worked his way up the small-town circuits, married a stand-by-your-man sweetheart, Kellie Kyle (Cynthia Geary), endured an on-the-road life of cheap-jack motels and finally made it to the top at the National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas.

Frost must have been a cracker-jack character, but the movie turns him into a cardboard good guy. He’s squeaky clean even when he’s straying with a groupie or having a honky-tonk snit. The hellbent passion that would keep a man retrofitted atop a bounding 2,000-pound bull for the competitive minimum of at least eight very long seconds is nowhere in evidence in Perry’s aw-shucks posturing. Neither is the effects of the commercialization of the sport. That’s been purified too. The inspirationalism goes down easier that way.

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Director John Avildsen, who directed “Rocky” and “The Karate Kid,” knows something about inspirational movies--and he appears to have forgotten most of it here. Frost never sinks low enough to make his rise exciting; his ordeals--wife problems, father problems, etc.--are standard. The screenwriter, Monte Merrick, must have recognized this--at one point he has one of the characters remark on how much their lives resemble a country-Western song. Actually, their lives resemble a bad country song. The good ones don’t indulge in all this processed heartbreak.

Stephen Baldwin, as Lane’s bull-riding buddy “Tuff” Hedeman, has a few swaggering good moments and James Rebhorn, playing Lane’s father Clyde, has an acrid edge that de-sudses his scenes. (The filmmakers intend Clyde’s competitiveness with his son to be his way of showing love, but that’s not how it plays.)

The most solid presence in the film, though, is the great bull Red Rock, Lance’s perpetual nemesis. He has a gravity lacking in the rest of the movie. He should have bucked a few more of its honchos.

‘8 Seconds’

Luke Perry: Lane Frost

James Rebhorn: Clyde Frost

Stephen Baldwin: Tuff

Cynthia Geary: Kellie Frost

New Line Productions presentation of a Jersey Films production. Director John Avildsen. Producer Michael Shamberg. Executive producer Jeffrey Swab. Screenplay by Monte Merrick. Cinematographer Victor Hammer. Editor J. Douglas Seelig. Costumes Deena Appel. Music Bill Conti. Production design William J. Cassidy. Art director John Frick. Set decorator Jenny C. Patrick. Running time: 1 hour, 48 minutes.

MPAA rating: PG-13, for language. Times guidelines: It includes bone-crushing, bull-goring scenes.