There was so much stuff going on around the Interbike show that tough choices had to be made sometimes and so on the Wednesday evening we sacked off from watching the skinny XC pros riding floodlit cyclocross and lined up with the DH pros to get into the world premiere of New World Disorder 8 - SMACKDOWN.

It got off to a bad start with a 2-hour-late start, a massive queue (which we were at the front of) and Robbie Bourdon not being allowed in to see his own movie due to being (allegedly) intoxicated but eventually the film rolled on the big(ish) screen. There is a bit of a wrestling theme to the movie, which is pretty lame but gives them the chance to call it “SMACKDOWN” I suppose. It sort of works sometimes but goes a bit random most of the time, and it only emphasises the “one rider - one trademark segment” style of the NWD films, which is getting a bit boring now. And it always seems to be the same riders too.

Anyway luckily the first rider is Andreu Lacondeguy who I haven’t seen much of yet in movies and his section is pretty awesome. Huge tricks that I hadn’t seen before and some really nice wire-cam work with some great close-ups, you can see all the detail of the tailwhips and flips. Other early and noteworthy scenes feature Cedric Gracia hammering some woodland, and Fabien Barel doing what he does best, going really very fast indeed, not messing around on lame jumps like in Earthed 4. One shot in particular is worth watching over and over, Barel riding toward the camera at a million mph and hurtling into a corner with loads of dirt flying up, there’s a microsecond of it on the Teaser movie here at about 45 seconds but you need to see the whole shot really.

Unfortunately after that the movie gets a bit dull, it’s not that the riders aren’t any good but there’s nothing really new to feast your eyes on and after a promising start with new camera angles and style it goes back to the same old, same old, like they ran out of ideas and had a movie to finish. Lots of big air, lots of spins whips and flips but although impressive it’s not really something I can identify with (as anyone who’s seen me jumping would agree with). I’d much rather see Gracia or Barel riding really fast with roost flying up everywhere which is something I can at least aspire to, even if the only roost I flick up is a little spec of mud that was caught in my tyre tread and got round the crud catcher but at least I can try. There’s no way I’m ever going to pull a 360 backflip and so it gets a bit boring after a while and in fact I can’t really remember the second half of the movie as it all blended together.So would I buy this movie? Well maybe, there are some good bits worth watching lots of times so I guess if you skip the rest and keep repeating the quality stuff you’ll get your money’s worth. Get ready with the rewind button.