What makes it different from others?

Dreadfully Boring

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

I caught this on cable one late night in the early/mid 90's. May have been Cinemax's Vanguard Theatre ( where they would feature cult, B, art house, etc.)but I can't remember.It starts out with scenes of a kid making something wood and metal in what looks like a basement while his parents are violently arguing upstairs. At first, it's hard to tell if the voices are flashback and the metal and wood creation are some torture device of a deranged psycho or perhaps the kid is going to use the device he's building to kill his arguing parents. As it turns out, he is making leg extensions so that he can run away in this candy apple red 60's era Mustang.From there it becomes a surreal road movie where the boy stops at various gas stations to play some long forgotten sweepstakes game. You get a certain number of gallons of gas from Chimera Gas Stations you get a game token and peel off the sticker, you collect letters and if you spell out MOTORAMA, you get a visit and tour of the Chimera headquarters.Along this odyssey, he runs into the freakiest cast of characters to ever inhabit the deserts of the American southwest. He comes across a variety of oddballs at rest stops, diners, gas stations, and roadside attractions. None of which seem to realize, or at least acknowledge, that he's a young pre-teen kid.One of the scenes I remember as particularly bizarre was a married couple pick him up, act overtly sexual towards him, and I believe, drug him. When he awakes, they apparently have given him a tattoo.Eventually he makes it to Chimera HQ but it turns out they want to renig because no one was supposed to make it that far. My memory is a little fuzzy on the exact ending.I have been looking for this movie off and on for ten years and every time I would describe it I would get blank stares as I tried to describe the whacked out plot to people. Apparently it is on DVD now so I can check one more off my wanted list.I urge anyone who is a fan of offbeat black comedy road movies, to find this and watch it!

Motorama viewers should already by keen on other offbeat b-grade desert-based films such as Bagdad Cafe or Repo Man (which more or less takes place in the desert). It also models some of the bizarre humor (and especially eccentric trail of characters) of writer Joseph Minion's comedy, 'After Hours.' In a sort of desert roadtrip fantasy, a metaphor of temptation and redemption, Gus (played well by Jordan Christopher Michael), a clever 10 year-old boy cashes in his piggy bank, steals a Mustang, and runs away from his grossly neglecting parents. It begins as a trip through salvation (which is apparent in the scenes with John Diehl), but once he becomes hooked on a scratch-off game called Motorama, he becomes easily tainted by temptation and looses his childish innocence. He travels from one crazy fictional state to another concocting ways of getting Motorama cards from participating gas stations, just enough so that he might spell out the prize winning word M-O-T-O-R-A-M-A and be eligible for the $500 million cash prize.Along the way, he is embattled with dozens of strange characters such as Flea who plays a high strung busboy, Meatloaf who plays a crazy biker, and Mary Woronov and Sandy Baron (a Seinfeld regular) as two violent kidnappers. The DVD rerelease can be very deceptive, as have previous attempts to sell this film to the non-cult market first with taglines comparing it to Home Alone and Thelma & Louise. The newest calling it a love story with the tagline implying that the film is about Jordan Michael Christopher on an adventure to meet the girl of his dreams...which, despite the size of her picture on the DVD cover, is actually only about a 1 second cameo by Drew Barrymore as the fantasy girl that Gus dreams about. Why didn't they just market it for what it was? Thought it may seem totally bizarre on first viewing, it is actually a well-designed narrative. Motorama is great material for fans of strange b-grade comedies. This was quite an interesting story, and particularly because of the strength of its lead actor--Jordan Michael Christopher (who unfortunately has few other screen credits of note)--and the clever metaphor inherent in the plot. Hopefully its re-release on DVD will make it an easier find for cult fans.

Too bad 'Motorama' never found an audience that would appreciate it! Misleadingly thought by some to be a kids movie, it is closer in spirit to David Lynch's stylized surreal looks at the "real" America. Jordan Christopher Michael plays a young boy who runs away from home, and travel across America in a stolen car. Only it isn't exactly America as we know it. At a gas station he is given some "motorama" cards, which are part of a competition which has a possible 500 million dollar prize. He slowly becomes obsessed with the game as he continues on his increasingly bizarre trip, which sees him encounter a strange bunch of oddballs, eccentrics and weirdos. He even loses an eye along the way! The nutters he interacts with are played by an amazing array of character actors and cult figures including Lynch favourite Jack Nance ('Eraserhead'), Susan Tyrrell ('Flesh and Blood'), Mary Woronov ('Eating Raoul'), Michael J. Pollard ('Bonnie And Clyde'), John Diehl ('Stripes'), Dick Miller ('A Bucket Of Blood'), Robert Picardo ('Innerspace'), Flea, Meatloaf, and a teenage Drew Barrymore (note sleaze fans - a pre-breast reduction teenage Drew Barrymore!). This movie is easily overlooked in the video racks - especially with its misleading "Home Alone meets Thelma And Louise" packaging - but it is really worth watching. Fans of quirky road movies like 'Wild At Heart', 'Highway 61' or 'Roadside Prophets' should enjoy this quietly subversive dark fantasy, which in my opinion is one of the most unfairly overlooked movies of the last ten years or so.

This movie is incredible. It is one of the few truly unique films out there, and I can't believe I hadn't seen it until just last night. It doesn't fit into any trite movie formula, but it's also not meaningless fantasy. Motorama truly has a hypnotizing effect on the viewer. You become as obsessed with trying to figure this movie out,as the boy is with winning motorama. I love how this film is pure metaphor and completely disregards reality. It takes place in a completely fictional world. Even the names of the states and the money are fake. And yet there is something so familiar about that world. I won't say anymore about the plot, but I just highly recommend this film to anyone who appreciates an original and strange story.