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Printer-Friendly ModeBow Wow effective in Roll
September 26, 2005 —
Roll Bounce is a movie about fighting against the odds, coming of age, and never giving up. These are common themes in movies, and when hearing of another movie filled with them, audiences may be deterred, assuming it to be yet another cookie-cutter inspirational flick. However, played out as these ideas are, they are yet timeless, and when the movie does it right, they can be both pleasing and moving. Roll Bounce isn't great, but it does it right, and it succeeds wherever it can.
Bow Wow plays Xavier, or X, one of many young people in the late 70s whose life is roller skating, and showing off some pretty amazing dance-based moves while doing so. The movie opens with a sequence involving the last skate X and his friends have at their beloved local skating rink, which is closing down. At this point, the only option is to go the Sweetwater Roller Rink, at the other side of town. Sweetwater is huge, different, and intimidating. Filled with different music, different people, and different skating than they are used to, Sweetwater represents the real world, and all the pitfalls and opportunities contained therein.
There are two main locations for the film: Sweetwater and Xavier's house and surrounding neighborhood. Xavier has a little sister and a father, but no mother. She passed away a couple years back, and the family is still recovering. As the movie progresses, we begin to see that the father, despite his lofty position in the family hierarchy, and his college degree, is going through the same thing as Xavier. He has been thrown, jobless, into a new world, where he has to awkwardly try to deal with his daughter, and is also attempting to find a career and a companion. Xavier and his father fail to understand each other, despite being on parallel paths.
All of this is making this movie sound like a drama, yet it really isn't. Roll Bounce is mostly a lighthearted, funny film. The father himself was the greatest source of comic amusement for me, with some great one-liners. All of Xavier's friends have some amusing personality quirks, and they all get some laughs at some point.
Of course, there has to be an antagonist as well, and Roll Bounce supplies one with the odd Sweetness. Sweetness is the best skater around, and he surrounds himself with devotees: women of many races, and even a group of male skaters whose devotion to him seems, well, a little excessive. The climax of the movie involves a skate-off, where the two main contenders are Xavier's group and Sweetness' group. Xavier is the best skater in his group, because unlike the others, who scoff at the differences between them and other skaters, Xavier observes and learns from them, even incorporating figure skating into his maneuvers.
Roll Bounce is a genuinely funny movie with genuinely valuable teachings. It gives a very interesting view of the 70s. It is a good coming-of-age movie, and while it doesn't overly move or shock, it does well on the levels it tries to.