Director Steve Boyum came to Motocrossed with his expertise and experience as a motocross racer. The film centers around a motocross family, the Carsons, and explores their understanding of gender roles. Edward Carson is the dad. He manages Carson Racing and is obsessed with his son, Andrew, excelling at the sport. His younger son, Jason, is the family’s mechanic (and one of my favorite characters — he’s so sweet). Andrew’s twin is Andrea/Andi (Alana Austin). Their mom, Geneva, basically goes along with their dad’s motocross demands. But all that changes when Andrew gets hurt and can’t race.

Andrea loves motocross racing, but her father doesn’t want her to have anything to do with it. Edward jets off to Europe to find a male racer to replace Andrew. While he’s out of town, Andrea chops off her hair and starts masquerading as Andrew. She soon has her mom’s blessing to pretend to be her brother and race, going by her nickname, Andi. Geneva and Andi have some good mother-daughter bonding throughout their stunt. Andi has a huge crush on another racer, Dean Talon, but she has to play it cool and act like a dude. It gets worse. She helps him impress another girl, named Faryn. Andi even gives Dean and Faryn her *NSYNC tickets!!

After pulling off their trick pretty successfully, the Carson family plan is thrown upside down. Edward comes home from Europe with the rudest racer of all time, Rene Cartier. The dad is livid because he had already forbidden Andi from racing. “I want to you to start concentrating on things that a 15-year-old girl should be concentrating on,” he said earlier in the film. Yeah. He said that.

Rene Cartier is a jerk, and Edward finally sees as much when Rene pushes Andi. Andi and her dad have a heart-to-heart, and with some emergency help from Jason the mechanic, she is set to race again. Andi wins, gets her time to shine with an ESPN reporter, and just when she’s in danger of being disqualified, the (female) senior vice president of racing applauds her and gives Carson Racing a contract. Sweetening the deal, the hottie Dean Talon is their new rider.

This is one of the first DCOMs I watched, and it will always have a special place in my heart. I’d say that the “girls can do anything” message was received back in 2001. By me, anyway.