YMMV / Viva Knievel!

• Awesome Music: The movie's title song. Glorious '70s cheese.
• Broken Aesop / Do Not Do This Cool Thing: Evel scolds other characters for engaging in harmful vices like drinking and drug use, but he routinely endangers his own life with his motorcycle stunts. This contradiction is lampshaded in the Rifftrax commentary.invoked
  Mike Nelson (as Evel Knievel): Remember kids, whatever you do, don't engage in risky behavior that might harm you! Now watch me jump some angry lions and make more money than your dad does in a year!
• Designated Hero: Both Evel and Will are framed as if the audience should root for them, but they give no actual reason for them to do so. Will is an alcoholic asshole who is emotionally abusive to his son as well as being a deadbeat dad with a nasty temper. Evel is constantly the subject of Character Shilling from everyone (even his enemies!) and acts very rudely towards his "love interest," contradicts himself by yelling at Will for being an alcoholic or other stunt drivers for being reckless when the shit he does is as reckless if not more, and he meddles in Gene's life with his son in a way that isn't endearing and feels forced.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Evel in the film is saved from a fatal accident by Jesse, who knocks him out before he can do the jump and rides the rigged cycle in his place. To promote the movie in January 1977, Knievel attempted a live televised stunt jump over a tank of sharks, but lost control during the unbroadcast rehearsal and slid into a cameraman, which he would harbor guilt over for years. The underwhelming network special that followed, which featured only other, lesser-known stunt riders, was a public embarrassment for Knievel, and might have contributed to Viva Knievel's poor box office.
  • The movie goes to great lengths to show Evel as a morally upright, anti-drugs guy who "forgives and forgets", and is being taken advantage of by a crooked manager at the beginning of the film. Months after Viva Knievel arrived in theaters, the real Evel would do jail time and probation for assaulting his former press agent Shelly Saltman over an unflattering biography he'd written that alleged Knievel was a drug addict; the incident, where he nearly killed Saltman with an aluminum bat, would mark the beginning of the end for his daredevil career.
• Narm: Standard for any film with Leslie Nielsen playing the Big Bad — you can't take Nielsen seriously.
• Questionable Casting: 65-year-old Gene Kelly plays a hard-drinking motorcycle mechanic described by another character as a "gorilla".
• Retroactive Recognition: An early role for Dabney Coleman, before he struck it big with 9 to 5.
• So Bad, It's Good: The story is ridiculous and Evel’s portrayal is Narm, but the decent action scenes and sheer goofiness of the film itself make it an endearing watch.
• Squick: Given that Gene Kelly was 65 at the time, it's not very pleasant for most people thinking about the fact that he has a young son at that age.
• Strangled by the Red String: There's zero chemistry between Evel and Kate, and the romance feels forced after establishing Kate is precisely the sort of woman who'd back away, far away from someone like Evel.
• Tear Jerker: Will looking through Tommy's scrapbook and breaking down shortly after seeing his old wedding photo without a single line of dialogue is one of the legitimately touching moments in the film.

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