This week the Bad Dads ride across South America with The Motorcycle Diaries, Walter Salles’s 2004 drama starring Gael García Bernal as young Ernesto Guevara and Rodrigo de la Serna as Alberto Granado.

Before the main feature, the Dads count down their favourite movie motorcycles, from Arnie’s shotgun-reloading Harley in Terminator 2 to Tom Cruise going full Cruise in Top Gun and Mission: Impossible, the Easy Rider chopper, Indy’s sidecar, Tron’s light cycles, Dumb and Dumber’s scooter, John Wick’s katana bike fight, Fonzie’s Knucklehead and Dan’s beloved World’s Fastest Indian.

What We Covered

• Top 5 Motorcycles: a surprisingly rich category covering choppers, scooters, sidecars, sci-fi bikes, stunt riding and Tom Cruise’s apparent allergy to helmets.
• La Poderosa: the battered Norton 500 that carries Ernesto and Alberto until it absolutely cannot, giving the film its comic engine and its road-movie shape.
• Memory vs rewatch: Sidey remembers seeing the film at the cinema and discovers he had misremembered the pair as having one bike each.
• Ernesto and Alberto: the Dads enjoy the friendship, the teasing, the appetite for adventure, and Alberto’s role as a funny, earthy foil to Ernesto’s more serious awakening.
• A journey through inequality: miners, indigenous communities, poverty, illness and exploitation gradually turn the trip from lads’ adventure into political education.
• The leper colony: the San Pablo section becomes the emotional centre of the film, especially Ernesto’s refusal to accept easy divisions between people.
• Che without the T-shirt: the group discuss how the film shows the conditions that could radicalise someone without reducing Guevara to a poster, slogan or merch logo.
• Show, don’t tell politics: Sidey praises the film for making its points quietly; Reegs notes the documentary-like authenticity; Cris reflects on education, knowledge and the ability to imagine different power structures.
• Travel as transformation: Dan highlights the idea that any journey like this, at that age and through those conditions, would inevitably change you.
• Final images: the airport farewell, the real Alberto, the closing text and the real photographs give the film a wistful, reflective ending.

Key Quotes / Moments

• “I thought they had a motorcycle each.”
• “I need your clothes, your boots and your motorcycle.”
• “Top five motorcycles. I’m amazed that we’ve not done this before.”
• “He’s not the same me anymore.”
• “It doesn’t ram his ideology down your throat.”
• “A strong recommend all round.”

Verdict

A strong recommend from the Dads. The Motorcycle Diaries is praised as warm, funny, beautiful and quietly powerful — a road movie about friendship, privilege, poverty and the moment a person starts to see the world differently.

You can now text us anonymously to leave feedback, suggest future content or simply hurl abuse at us. We'll read out any texts we receive on the show. Click here to try it out!

We love to hear from our listeners! By which I mean we tolerate it. If it hasn't been completely destroyed yet you can usually find us on twitter @dads_film, on Facebook Bad Dads Film Review, on email at baddadsjsy@gmail.com or on our website baddadsfilm.com.

Until next time, we remain...

Bad Dads

This week the Bad Dads take on Akira, Katsuhiro Otomo’s 1988 anime classic: part cyberpunk biker movie, part psychic apocalypse, part body-horror nightmare, and still one of the most influential animated films ever made.

What We Covered

• The motorcycle connection: Sidey picked Akira partly off the back of motorcycle week, with the famous “Akira slide” still instantly recognisable decades later.
• Neo-Tokyo and the set-up: The Dads discuss the opening destruction of Tokyo, the rebuilt dystopian city, biker gangs, riots, unemployment, militarised politics and general “not a happy place” energy.
• Kaneda, Tetsuo and the Capsules: Kaneda’s iconic red bike, Tetsuo’s resentment, the gang hierarchy, and the way their childhood friendship feeds the film’s final emotional punch.
• The psychic test subjects: Takashi, the other child-like espers, the hospital experiments, telekinesis, hallucinations, and the film’s blend of sci-fi plot with surreal nightmare imagery.
• Tetsuo’s transformation: From headaches and glass-of-water Force powers to satellite lasers, a metal arm, body horror, and a final monstrous collapse into flesh, pain and chaos.
• Akira himself: The reveal that Akira is not really “the guy on the bike”, but a dissected psychic force preserved in jars under the Olympic Stadium.
• The animation: Reegs praises the film’s restless visual movement; Dan says the craft makes you forget any resistance to animation; Sidey calls the full-mutant Tetsuo sequence incredible.
• Influence and legacy: The gang spot echoes and connections to The Matrix, Drive, Watchmen, 2001, Clockwork Orange, The Warriors, Godzilla destruction, and later anime/body-horror culture.
• Subtitles vs dubbing: Dan finds an English version in the “depths of the internet”, while others stick with Japanese and subtitles.
• Cris watch status: Cris did not get to the film because he could not find it properly and refused to watch it on a phone — fair, frankly.

Key Quotes / Moments

• “There’s very little ball content in Akira.”
• “The Akira slide… one of the most famous shots in animation.”
• “It’s like the Force, but way more destructive.”
• “I’m in the revolution, mate. I’m busy.”
• “SOL Campbell” as the orbital laser gag. Obviously.
• “It wasn’t quite Dogtanian.”

Verdict

A strong recommend from the Dads. Sidey calls it a great gateway into anime, Dan enjoys it more than expected and finds the animation absorbing, and Reegs loves the film’s kinetic craft and cultural footprint. Cris remains technically unconverted, but tempted.

You can now text us anonymously to leave feedback, suggest future content or simply hurl abuse at us. We'll read out any texts we receive on the show. Click here to try it out!

We love to hear from our listeners! By which I mean we tolerate it. If it hasn't been completely destroyed yet you can usually find us on twitter @dads_film, on Facebook Bad Dads Film Review, on email at baddadsjsy@gmail.com or on our website baddadsfilm.com.

Until next time, we remain...

Bad Dads

On this episode of Bad Dads Film Review, the team reviews Aftersun (2022) — Charlotte Wells’ quietly devastating father-daughter memory piece starring Paul Mescal and Frankie Corio.

In this episode

• Top 5 Holidays: package holiday dread, cancelled flights, family trips, airport memories, and British holiday behaviour at its absolute finest/worst
• Sidey’s Malta anxiety and the curse of relatives who “mog” every conversation
• What the dads watched this week, including Spider-Noir, Is This Thing On?, Heat, and other pre-main-feature detours
• Why Aftersun plays less like a traditional plot and more like an adult trying to decode childhood memory
• Adult Sophie watching old camcorder footage of her holiday with Calum in Turkey
• The recurring rave/strobe imagery and Sophie trying to reach the father she only half-understood
• Calum’s hidden depression: cigarettes, self-help books, Tai Chi, money worries, shame, and emotional withdrawal
• The cheap holiday resort details: rep bus, room mix-up, wristbands, dinner run, pool tables, scuba mask, karaoke and tourist entertainment
• The expensive rug as a possible attempt to leave Sophie something tangible
• The brutal karaoke scene with Losing My Religion
• The final dance to Under Pressure and the airport departure ending
• How the film handles male depression and implied suicide without spelling everything out
• Paul Mescal and Frankie Corio’s performances, and why the film rewards intense viewing

Bad Dads consensus

• Reegs: Loved it — brilliantly made, emotionally precise, dreamlike, and rich in detail
• Sidey: Strong recommend — hugely powerful, very well made, but absolutely not a fun watch
• Dan: Strong recommend, with caveats — found it genuinely hard to sit with because it stirred up memories and difficult emotions
• Cris: Did not meaningfully watch it — put it on, went for a wee, fell asleep, and woke up when it was done

Final take

Aftersun is one of those films the dads admire deeply while also warning listeners to choose their moment carefully. It is quiet, ambiguous and emotionally bruising — a film about memory, parenting, depression, guilt, love and what children only understand years later.

You can now text us anonymously to leave feedback, suggest future content or simply hurl abuse at us. We'll read out any texts we receive on the show. Click here to try it out!

We love to hear from our listeners! By which I mean we tolerate it. If it hasn't been completely destroyed yet you can usually find us on twitter @dads_film, on Facebook Bad Dads Film Review, on email at baddadsjsy@gmail.com or on our website baddadsfilm.com.

Until next time, we remain...

Bad Dads

On this episode of Bad Dads Film Review, the team reviews Abigail (2024) — a gleefully gory vampire horror-comedy from Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, starring Melissa Barrera, Alisha Weir, Dan Stevens, Kathryn Newton, Kevin Durand, Angus Cloud, Giancarlo Esposito, and Matthew Goode.

In this episode

• Why the poster and streaming artwork spoil the film’s big vampire reveal
• Universal’s monster-movie legacy, from the failed Dark Universe to The Invisible Man, Renfield, and Abigail
• The heist-movie setup: anonymous criminals, Rat Pack aliases, a creepy manor, and a 24-hour ransom job
• Abigail’s Swan Lake opening and the early clue that she may not be as young as she looks
• The crew: Joey, Frank, Sammy, Rickles, Peter, Dean, and Lambert
• Giancarlo Esposito airport-chat, Terry Waite hostage tangent, and the inevitable Bad Dads detours
• Kristof Lazaar as the film’s Keyser Söze figure
• Dean’s pantry death, the Valdez misdirection, and the vampire reveal everyone at home probably already knew was coming
• Failed vampire defences: holy water, crucifixes, garlic/onions, stakes, sunlight, and general criminal incompetence
• The corpse pool, puppet-dancing, flying vampires, exploding bodies, and the increasingly messy final act
• Dan Stevens as Frank, Alisha Weir’s excellent monster-child performance, and Melissa Barrera grounding the whole thing as Joey
• Parent-child horror: Joey’s absent-mother guilt versus Abigail’s desperate need for her father’s attention

Bad Dads consensus

• Sidey: Strong recommend — enjoyed the daftness, gore, performances, and vampire lore play
• Dan: Strong recommend — expected something scarier, but found it funny, silly, and much more enjoyable than feared
• Reegs: Positive overall — liked the craft and cast, compared it to From Dusk Till Dawn, but felt the ending dragged and got messy
• Cris: Not a recommend — thought it was too long, not funny enough, and stranded between comedy, horror, and thriller

Final take

Abigail works best as a polished, knowingly ridiculous locked-house monster movie: criminals in a mansion, vampire ballerina on the loose, and enough exploding blood to repaint a stately home. It is not subtle, and the ending overstays its welcome, but for most of the dads the cast and energy carry it.

You can now text us anonymously to leave feedback, suggest future content or simply hurl abuse at us. We'll read out any texts we receive on the show. Click here to try it out!

We love to hear from our listeners! By which I mean we tolerate it. If it hasn't been completely destroyed yet you can usually find us on twitter @dads_film, on Facebook Bad Dads Film Review, on email at baddadsjsy@gmail.com or on our website baddadsfilm.com.

Until next time, we remain...

Bad Dads

On this episode of Bad Dads Film Review, the team reviews Toscana (2022), Netflix’s Danish-Italian comfort drama about a stressed fine-dining chef who inherits his father’s restaurant in Tuscany and slowly rediscovers rustic cooking, unresolved family memories, and a wildly inconvenient romance.

In this episode

• The tragic walking football update: a playoff final lost on penalties, after Sidey chose love and anniversary plans over football
• Dan’s gardening-inspired Top 5 theme: plants in film and television
• The Day of the Triffids, Audrey II, Ents, Leon’s plant, Martian potatoes, Interstellar corn, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, Batman’s blue flower, Cheech and Chong’s marijuana van, Tomacco, Swamp Thing, Groot, and Moriarty’s dead plants
• Reegs’ full crop of plant-film puns, including Chive Angry, Kill Dill, Mulch Ado About Nothing, Full Petal Jacket, and music by Sage Against the Machine
• Sidey’s essential full English breakfast rules: beans on the plate, fried bread as gold standard, black pudding welcome, hash browns firmly under suspicion
• Toscana’s dubbed-language confusion before Sidey realises the film is Danish, Italian and English
• Theo Dahl’s sterile Danish fine-dining kitchen, tweezer food, a lost €9m investor, and a full meltdown at the pass
• Cris calling out the fantasy of a top chef personally cleaning the kitchen
• Theo’s inheritance trip to Tuscany, his battle with rustic food, suspect ice cubes, and unexpectedly excellent olive oil
• Sophia, Pino, the wedding catering deal, and the film’s very convenient emotional geography
• The €500k/€900k sale gamble and Theo’s professional pride kicking in
• The romance problem: Sophia is engaged, Pino seems perfectly sound, and Theo spends much of the film behaving like a potato
• Theo rediscovering cooking “by feel” rather than by gram-perfect control
• The ending: sale completed, buy-back arranged, Danish chefs shipped to Tuscany, Sophia returns, and everyone apparently embraces rustic restaurant life

Bad Dads consensus

• Scenery: gorgeous
• Runtime: painless and breezy
• Plot: extremely predictable
• Food content: oddly less visible than expected
• Romance: not especially believable
• Pino: treated very harshly by the film
• Theo: hard to root for, despite the intended redemption arc
• Overall: watchable but thin — Dan and Cris found it easy to sit through, while Sidey wanted more charisma, chemistry and actual cooking

You can now text us anonymously to leave feedback, suggest future content or simply hurl abuse at us. We'll read out any texts we receive on the show. Click here to try it out!

We love to hear from our listeners! By which I mean we tolerate it. If it hasn't been completely destroyed yet you can usually find us on twitter @dads_film, on Facebook Bad Dads Film Review, on email at baddadsjsy@gmail.com or on our website baddadsfilm.com.

Until next time, we remain...

Bad Dads

On this episode of Bad Dads Film Review, the team reviews Jonah Hex (2010) — DC’s supernatural western starring Josh Brolin as the scarred bounty hunter, John Malkovich as revenge-villain Quentin Turnbull, and Megan Fox as Lilah/Tallulah, depending on which bit of the film you believe.

In this episode

• Dan’s late pick and the argument over whether Jonah Hex counts as the midweek movie
• “Johan Hex” and the accidental Scandinavian spin-off nobody asked for
• The brutally rushed origin story: dead family, branded face, Native American resurrection smoke, and crow-adjacent powers
• Jonah Hex as a supernatural bounty hunter who can temporarily revive corpses for information
• The horse-mounted Gatling guns and the film’s steampunk Wild West weaponry
• Megan Fox’s immaculate Wild West prostitute character and the noble-prostitute trope
• Michael Fassbender’s bowler hat, neck tattoo, Irish accent, and career-survival appearance
• John Malkovich’s oddly flat Turnbull performance and his plan to attack America with glowing cannonball super-weapons
• The confusing resurrection sequence, crow-from-the-mouth imagery, and anticlimactic final showdown
• Comparisons with Ghost Rider, Cowboys & Aliens, Wild Wild West, Preacher, The Crow, The Dark Knight, and The Outlaw Josey Wales
• The film’s disastrous box office: around $47m reported production budget versus around $10.5m worldwide return, before marketing

Bad Dads consensus

• Runtime: mercifully short
• Cast: bizarrely stacked
• Plot coherence: extremely questionable
• Visual ideas: occasional flashes of something better
• Performances: mostly phoned in, with Brolin just about surviving it
• Best feature: it ends quickly
• Overall: not a recommend, though Dan resists calling it one of the worst ever and Cris may still watch it out of sheer curiosity

You can now text us anonymously to leave feedback, suggest future content or simply hurl abuse at us. We'll read out any texts we receive on the show. Click here to try it out!

We love to hear from our listeners! By which I mean we tolerate it. If it hasn't been completely destroyed yet you can usually find us on twitter @dads_film, on Facebook Bad Dads Film Review, on email at baddadsjsy@gmail.com or on our website baddadsfilm.com.

Until next time, we remain...

Bad Dads

On this episode of Bad Dads Film Review, the team reviews Apex (2026) — a stripped-back survival thriller set in the Australian outback starring Charlize Theron, Taron Egerton, and Eric Bana.

In this episode

• Garden-recording vibes, warm-weather chaos, and the usual Bad Dads preamble
• Top 5 Travellers/Gypsies segment before the main review
• Setup: remote climbing trip gone wrong after a devastating opening loss
• Tone shift from survival drama to psychological hunter/prey thriller
• Ben’s “helpful stranger” act and the slow reveal of what’s really going on
• Key tension moments: camp, cave, traps, cliff climb, and escape sequence
• Cannibal reveal and why that pushes the film into darker territory
• Performances: Charlize’s physical lead work and Egerton’s menace
• Runtime/pacing: lean, effective, and mostly free of bloat

Bad Dads consensus

• Tension and atmosphere: strong
• Performances: very strong
• Predictability: some broad beats are readable, but execution lands
• Rewatch value: good if you like survival thrillers with edge
• Overall: Strong recommend (all three)

You can now text us anonymously to leave feedback, suggest future content or simply hurl abuse at us. We'll read out any texts we receive on the show. Click here to try it out!

We love to hear from our listeners! By which I mean we tolerate it. If it hasn't been completely destroyed yet you can usually find us on twitter @dads_film, on Facebook Bad Dads Film Review, on email at baddadsjsy@gmail.com or on our website baddadsfilm.com.

Until next time, we remain...

Bad Dads

On this episode of Bad Dads Film Review, the dads review Saipan (2025), a dramatization of one of the most explosive moments in modern Irish football history.

In this episode

• Why this story still matters: Ireland’s 2002 World Cup buildup and the Keane/McCarthy fallout
• The core tension: perfectionist, win-first standards vs “get the job done” tournament pragmatism
• Camp preparation issues and why they became the flashpoint
• Club-vs-country politics in the background (including pressure dynamics around Manchester United)
• Performances: thoughts on the Roy Keane portrayal and Steve Coogan’s grounded McCarthy
• Whether the film feels fair to both sides or leans into dramatized caricature
• The wider football question: was Keane right in principle but wrong in approach?

Bad Dads consensus

• Story relevance: high
• Performance quality: strong, with mixed reactions on specific portrayal choices
• Historical accuracy: debated
• Rewatch value: good for football fans and sports-drama watchers
• Overall: **Strong recommend**

You can now text us anonymously to leave feedback, suggest future content or simply hurl abuse at us. We'll read out any texts we receive on the show. Click here to try it out!

We love to hear from our listeners! By which I mean we tolerate it. If it hasn't been completely destroyed yet you can usually find us on twitter @dads_film, on Facebook Bad Dads Film Review, on email at baddadsjsy@gmail.com or on our website baddadsfilm.com.

Until next time, we remain...

Bad Dads