Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Asphalt Burning’ on Netflix, a Norwegian Car-Porn Action-Comedy That Crashes and Burns

In its native Norwegian, Netflix movie Asphalt Burning is titled Borning 3, so any Americans unfamiliar with the Borning franchise — and I’m betting most of them are — who press play on this may be a little lost at first. It certainly doesn’t help that Netflix confuses the whole endeavor by giving it an English title with nary an implication that the movie is a sequel. I’ll help a little here: The series is about this guy named Roy, played by Anders Baasmo Christiansen, who likes to race American automobiles, legally or otherwise, and he has some dopey pals; hilarious mishaps and lots of vroom-vrooming ensue. It’s not the most complicated concept to drop into, I guess, so maybe it’s not that big of a deal and it’s entertaining anyway. Or maybe it’s not worth getting into in the first place. Let’s find out.

ASPHALT BURNING: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Huzzah: Roy and longtime girlfriend Sylvia (Kathrine Thorborg Johansen, replacing Jenny Skavlan from the first two films) are getting married. The night before the official nuptials, the happy couple and their newish baby — named Shelby, after a character from Ford v Ferrari I think? — and all their friends and family are partying next to a gorgeous misty mountain whose visually wondrous thunder is the backdrop for a bevy of waxed-within-an-inch-of-their-lives muscle cars. The scene is kinda like the car-porn bits from The Fast and the Furious movies, but with less scantily clad booty-ladies and more chubby middle-aged white guys.

But then Sylvia’s old friend Robin (Alexandria Maria Lara) arrives in a slick red Porsche to crash the party and throw a wrench in the plotworks. Roy ish tipshy and (hic) having a real great shlurry time. He smooches her, for no reason other than because he’s stupider than a chicken in a Werner Herzog movie. The next day, Robin wrecks the wedding ceremony by revealing his moral failure. She pushes Sylvia and Shelby into the Porsche, and tells him he has to race her for the bride at vaunted German track Nurburgring. Sylvia goes along with it, possibly because she too is dumb as a Herzog chicken.

So Roy and a few of his silly friends road trip it from Land o’ th’ Fjords to Deutschland for the race. Two of them drive a restored vintage hearse so they can accidentally pick up a cadaver for comedy’s sake, and because just taking a 2014 Celica would be hella boring. On the road, they meet two more Roys so the characters can navigate the strained comedy of identity mix-ups. They also tangle with a hot-rodder villain named Lemmy (Henning Baum), who bears a far-more-than-passing resemblance to Lemmy Kilmister, late rock ‘n’ roll legend and leader of the incomparable and influential band Motörhead, who were huge, HUGE, in Germany (and are still huge, HUGE, in my basement). Anyway, will Roy win his lady back? Nei spöilers!

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The Bornings draw frequent comparison to The Cannonball Run and the Fast and/or Furious franchise, except nobody takes up the helms for Captain Chaos or Luke Hobbs.

Performance Worth Watching: Urf. The material is consistent with how remarkably it fails the cast. Although I will say the guy playing Lemmy does a perfectly OK Lemmy, although without the signature facial warts and snaggled teeth, possibly because the movie’s budget was apparently wholly blown on hot cars.

Memorable Dialogue: “Drive for love, Roy!” — a a piece of dialogue someone actually got paid to write

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: “Race for the bride”? Is this the most rickety jalopy of a premise ever? As far as car similes for movie plots go, this makes Chitty Chitty Bang Bang look like a Lamborghini. Sylvia’s take on it is essentially “this I gotta see,” possibly because she’s mad at Roy, and possibly because she’s an auto enthusiast who wants to visit Nurburgring, but mostly so the movie doesn’t have to find some other flimsy, moronic reason to exist.

But maybe, just maybe, this story is about the journey, not the destination. Its outcome is never really in doubt, so perhaps the point is the friends we make and the laughs we had and the love we felt along the way. You know, all that crap. The primary purpose of Asphalt Burning — besides capitalizing on the popularity of its predecessors in its homeland, of course — is to string together chase sequences with jokes delivered by wacky characters. So it’s too bad the chase sequences are forgettable and doctored with circa-2002 video-game CGI, and the jokes are DOA, and the characters are empty vessels plucked from ancient comedy junkyards. If Asphalt Burning is our introduction to the Borning movies, I can’t see anyone seeking out the previous two. What a düd.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Asphalt Burning — both the movie and the actual thing — stinks.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream Asphalt Burning on Netflix