The World's Fastest Indian (2005)

Such a weird movie.

Burt Munro's a nutty guy who lives in what amounts to a garage, pees on a lemon tree in his yard, and owns a genuine "Indian" motorcycle. He's a kind of joke in his New Zealand town, but he's decided to run his bike on the Salt Flats in Utah, by golly, and he aw-shucks his way all the way there and, wouldn'tcha know it, becomes a bona fide folk hero in the process.

Munro meets a cross-dressing clerk in, as (s)he calls it "Hollyweird," shacks up with a lonely widow who helps him fix up his broken down rig along the way, and generally charms everyone he meets, though I'm not sure how he does it because he just got on MY nerves.

I'm betting that the real story, stripped of all the force-fed feel-goodness, is a dandy. But this telling, because it was so obviously tarted up with smiley stickers and pixie dust, just left me cold.

D