Album Reviews
Movies
Concert Reviews
Movie Resources
Concert Reviews
Book Reviews

Top 10
Resources
Contact Us

I like seeing silly movies with a big audience. I don't trust my fellow critics, who telegraph their impatience a bit too quickly and are usually too jaded to laugh at the jokes. Much better is an opening-night crowd where people are actually excited to see the movie. And if the film doesn't score with those folk, then I can be pretty sure it's not working at all. Judging by the people I saw Roll Bounce with last weekend, that film's prospects are dim. While the theater was packed, the audience turned listless by the halfway point, and the biggest laugh was a derisive one aimed at the screen during the movie's emotional "high point."

The movie starts well. An evocative credit sequence sets us in the roller disco days of the '70s, when teenagers hung out in roller rinks and challenged each other to "skate-offs." One of those teens is Xavier (played by Bow-wow, Like Mike), though even his dad calls him X. X's favorite rink is closing down, and he's intimidated at the thought of heading to the north side. His crew of friends aren't as scared, and they convince X to try the huge Sweetwater rink. There he encounters Sweetness (Wesley Jonathan), the baddest skater around. At least that's what we're told. Given how much Sweetness stands around and how little he skates, I would've guessed that he was the baddest poser around. X also runs into Naomi (Meagan Good, Eve's Bayou), a beautiful young woman that X had a thing for back in the day. No bonus points for guessing how all of this ends.

Fortunately, director Malcolm Lee (Undercover Brother) and cinematographer James Muro (Crash) liberally sprinkle their comedy-drama with exquisitely filmed scenes of people skating around the floor. The elegantly moving camera dances with the various skaters, catching not only their impressive footwork and tricks but also their rhythm and grace. The low-level camerawork is designed to hide the fact that it's not Bow-wow and friends doing all those cool moves, but who cares? The sheer joy of floating along with old-style roller skating is enough.

Unfortunately, the non-skating scenes grow progressively less interesting. Part of this is the sheer predictability of the exercise, but it doesn't help that X's group of friends are some of the most uninteresting secondary characters I've seen in years. And the other sub-plots--X's father looking for a job, X befriending a new girl in the neighborhood--never get off the ground.

So the movie's success largely falls on Bow-wow, and those 18-year-old shoulders aren't quite broad enough. He has an easy-going charm, but whenever the movie gets serious, he falls apart. Unfortunately, those serious points occur more often than you'd guess (or want). He has to grieve for his dead mother, he has to reconcile with his taciturn father (Chi McBride, "Boston Public"), he has to be awkward around the girl he likes, he has to be honest with the girl he likes. And so forth and so on. Rather than focus on the skating, Lee and screenwriter Norman Vance Jr. are under the mistaken impression that the audience wants a drama.

Lee also doesn't give his young stars much to work with. He's continually forcing them into goofy reaction shots that test the mettle of even solid actors like McBride. The only one who comes out mostly unscathed is Jurnee Smollett, who reunites with her Eve's Bayou co-star, this time as X's cute but awkward new friend. Good is fine, though she's less and less believable as a teenager anymore. Wesley Jonathan as X's skating nemesis has nothing to do but pose, and he's not particularly good at that.

The adults fare better. I'm not a huge fan of Mike Epps (The Honeymooners), but he and Charles Q. Murphy ("Chappelle's Show") team up for a couple nice scenes of comic relief. And McBride is solid as the dad, at least until he's relegated to the reaction-shot zone in the finale. As for that finale, I couldn't quite blame the woman a couple seats from me who suddenly decided it was a good time to use her cell phone. 

J. Robert Parks  9/29/2005