MOVIE REVIEW : Interactive ‘Ride’ a Trip Into Atari-Land

“Ride for Your Life,” the third interactive movie from Interfilm, is much more arcade trip than theatrical experience. In this, parents of the targeted trigger-happy youngsters find themselves confronted with one of those classic “is the glass seven-eighths empty or one-eighth full” predicaments: Yes, instead of submitting to the demands of narrative, your children are playing video games again. But, hey, they’re playing video games as a community .

They’re also learning about pure democracy, since the audience votes at regular intervals via color-coded buttons on joysticks implanted in the theater’s cupholders, determining which path the laser-disc system in the projection booth takes. Player-patrons are encouraged to lobby as loudly as their little lungs can muster. (Suddenly, the old-fashioned Hollywood electoral-college system doesn’t seem so bad.)

The crux of the, er, story is a race through Central Park between Manhattan’s two fastest and handsomest bicycle messengers, Danny (Tyrone Henderson) and Nash (Matthew Lillard), described in an on-screen caption as “way cooler than Puck!” For reasons not immediately--and maybe not even eventually--apparent, the very fate of the world rests on the outcome, since the race sponsor is a big corporation called, yes, BigCorp, whose CEO (Adam West) is a nefarious alien bent on earthly domination.

Patrons pay $5 to see “Ride” twice, but don’t expect to figure out what bikes have to do with intergalactic despots in so few viewings. Some bouts of button-pushing produce quick bits of character background, but more often you’re just picking winners. A single 20- to 23-minute viewing is culled from two hours of possible material; most of the exposition therein takes place not in dialogue scenes, but bite-sized speeches, plus voice-over by an announcer who keeps score of audience points.

Inoffensiveness seems to be director (and Interfilm head) Bob Bejan’s main directive this time. The last Interfilm release, Bob Gale’s “Mr. Payback,” had a lot of booger humor and sex-fetish innuendo that apparently didn’t sit well with some parents of smallfry. Puerile as all that “Payback” sniggering was, “Ride” is such a bland trip into Atari-land you may sort of miss the snot rockets.

There is at least one nice “message” moment for kids in “Race for Your Life,” though: Late in the race, audiences may be faced with the choice of whether to have an alien-hating spy/sniper shoot down the cyclist favored by the evil corporation. If your theater chooses the “shoot” option, the game immediately ends, with “all points voided for inappropriate violence in the name of justice.” Would that life were this controlably interactive.

* MPAA-rating: PG, for brief incidents of mild violence and language. Times guidelines: Nothing remotely offensive for children in the variations we tested.

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‘Ride for Your Life’ Adam West: Monty Betty Buckley: Gus Tyrone Henderson: Danny Matthew Lillard: Nash An Interfilm production. Director Bob Bejan. Producer William Franzblau. Screenplay by Bejan, Tracy Fullerton. Cinematographer Daniel Shulman. Production design Bob Shaw. Running time: 20-23 minutes.

* In limited release in Southern California .