Hola all. Massawyrm here. Wow. You know, sometimes there are those films that you’re just not supposed to like - films that play upon cliché after cliché or suffer from some tragic flaw that keeps it from ever really being very good. Films that you are almost ashamed to admit you even saw – but secretly, down in the warm cockles of your heart, actually really like. Films like Hackers, The Cutting Edge, Krull, To Wong Foo, and Varsity Blues. Films you own on DVD but keep on the shelf behind your Special Edition Shawshank Redemption and Lord of the Rings Box Set, just to retain the air of respectability. We call them guilty pleasures and I don’t care how big a Billy Badass Film Buff you think you are, you’ve got them too. Whether it’s a deranged love for The Princess Diaries or it’s predecessor Pretty Woman, every person reading this review right now has at least a handful of DVDs in their collection that they would never, ever bring up in certain company for fear of complete and utter social annihilation. And despite what you say, you watch them a hell of a lot more than that Citizen Kane or The Seven Samurai DVD placed proudly at the forefront of your collection.

Now, knowing that I’m in good company, I’m just gonna let it all hang out right now. I. Fucking. Love. Roll Bounce. Love it. It sent me out of the theatre with such a smile on my face and a warm feeling in my belly that words cannot express the sheer joy I felt watching this movie. And I know I shouldn’t feel this way. Hell, I shouldn’t even be admitting it - knowing that doing so will probably nullify every review I ever write again. But I’ve got to do it. I love it that much.

Director Malcolm D. Lee has a big old hairy set of balls large enough to play pool with for making this film. This is the guy who made the great character piece “The Best Man” then followed it up with the campy, kitschy, but really funny “Undercover Brother.” Having proven himself with both character drama and slapstick throwback humor, Lee set out to make a movie that had not only been made before – but had been made before dozens of times. A film in a genre so tired, so beyond rehashing, that it can only be made for kids these days, simply because they’ve never gotten the chance to see it. This is a genre of legend, with films we consider so bad in this day and age that we still mock them 20 to 30 years after their conception. The Artistic Competition film. With films like Breakin’, Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, Dance to Win, Lambada, The Forbidden Dance (which are actually 2 separate films, Lambada actually being directed by the director of Breakin’) and of course the eternally mocked Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo, this is a genre ripe for eternal burial. And while a few Artistic Competition films have managed to find their audiences or even gain critical praise in recent years (like Center Stage and 8 Mile respectively) it remains the red flag of infinite cheese. But Lee decided to up the ante. This isn’t a Dance Competition film – no, no, no. It’s a Roller Skating Dance Competition film.

And if that weren’t enough of a kiss of death, Lee cast Shad ‘Bow Wow’ Moss as the lead. Now, while many of you may be unfamiliar with it, rule 386.3 of the Codified Rules for Critics prevents any and all of us from ever giving a positive review to a film starring anyone who ever included the word Li’l in their professional working name. It’s just not done. But here I am doing it.

Roll Bounce is far from a perfect film. Genre and lead aside, this film suffers from occasionally stiff acting and sparse moments of tired dialog. Add to that a thickly applied layer of melodrama as Bow Wow’s character X (short for Xavier) wrestles with the loss of his mom and the strained relationship with his father (Chi McBride) and you have a film that is mildly entertaining, but lacking anything truly noteworthy – for the first half of the film at least. Then, to add insult to injury, we’re treated to every dance movie cliché in the book – from the ugly duckling who blossomed over the summer and is now the desire of the protagonist as well as the lead antagonist, to the ugly duckling who transforms at the end of the film, right on down to the perfectly matching, overly gaudy outfits of the evil-skate-squad villains.

And what will really blow your mind is that none of this is done with the feel of real camp. It’s dead serious about the setting every moment of the way. And ultimately, that’s what really won me over with this film. The movie’s funny, don’t get me wrong, but never because of how silly the skating is or how cliché the antagonists are. At least, not in the way the current post-modern trend of films mocking the fads of the past are. Not in the way Undercover Brother was, or The Wedding Singer was or even a few moments in Boogie Nights. No, Lee sets you down smack dab in the middle of 1978 with all of the love and appreciation for the time that you’d expect out of a film maker making a film for the audiences OF 1978 – not at all what you’d expect for the audiences of 2005. The tone is never mocking. It’s very much “Hey, wasn’t this cool?” in a way that it reminds you that “Yeah, I really DID think that was cool.” All the while, Lee and screenwriter Norman Vance Jr. pepper the film with “Holy Crap! I remember that!” moments like the kids racing home to beat the streetlights coming on or the old metallic Pepsi cans with the pull tabs you had to discard. It’s a film that lovingly reminds you of what it was like to grow up in a period of time that people often laugh at when they reminisce about. And yet, the whole film leaves you with this surreal WTF feeling wondering just how in the hell Lee could be taking this so god damned seriously.

There are times when you think you are watching the gayest film ever made, because any self-respecting person would never admit that he ever thought silk wearing roller skaters were cool – unless he was poking other dudes. But that’s the subtle genius of this film. Lee is both serious and not at the same time. That’s just the way it was, and like it or not, if you’re old enough, you wished at some point in your life that you could have the respect that those really cool roller skaters demanded. And this film takes you back to that. And it makes you laugh at yourself, not the era. And then it gives you a skating competition.

Not just any skating competition mind you – a sequin filled, matching outfit, synchronized skating competition. One filled to the brim with disco, soul and a testosterone level akin to the epic struggle of the Jets vs. the Sharks. And it is absolutely glorious, shot beautifully and split-screened in only the way 70’s films could. As the competition came to a close however, I was unfulfilled. I turned to my buddy and said “If only we could get the leaders of both squads to go head to head in a skate off.” And yes, Malcolm D. lee had the balls to do it. Wesley Jonathan (Who plays the lead antagonist, the towns best skater, ‘Sweetness’ – Oh yeah, big hairy balls, I’m tellin’ ya) steps forward and says “We need a Skate-off!” I swear to god I cheered. I was gonna see a real honest to god skate off – absolutely free of any camp whatsoever, apart from that inherent in an actual skate off itself. And it made me smile.

And just to make the skate-off that much cooler, it’s Dj’d by Wayne “Choke a bitch” Brady sporting an Afro as big as a disco ball, who still manages to come off as cool as all hell. That’s the magic of Roll Bounce.

Ultimately, few people are going to walk out talking about the brilliance of Roll Bounce. Only a few more will call it very good at all. But quite a few people are going to love it nonetheless. Roll Bounce is the very definition of a guilty pleasure – one I plan on enjoying time and time again. And despite the fact that critics nationwide are bound to trash this thing and its name may become synonymous with films like Glitter and Gigli, I’m going to defend my love for it with my dying breath. Goofy and tongue in cheek in the best way possible, Roll Bounce is a remarkably entertaining film I’d recommend to anyone who secretly desires to simultaneously laugh and cheer at a skate-off. A lot of talent went into something this diabolically strange, and I take my hat off to Lee for pulling this out of…God knows where. But I’m off, I’ve got to find a space behind a Kurosawa film to put this. Somewhere easily accessible but not easy to see.

Well, until next time friends, smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em. I know I will.

Massawyrm