Rollerball

December 12, 2004

Rated: PG-13 Runtime: 99 min Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

DVD QuickTake

This movie sucked in the theater, and it still sucks on DVD even though this is the original R rated cut of the movie. I’m guessing that executives at MGM saw this version of the movie and figure that adults would never buy into this crap, so they threw it back to editing and released the PG-13 excrement we had to sit through in the theater. It bombed, so for the DVD they released the R rated version and prayed for a miracle. I’m not thinking their prayers are gonna be answered.

This is the same movie as the PG-13 version with 3 obvious exceptions. The locker room scene after the first game has some of the female players walking around topless, there are topless ladies present in the private party the big boss man is throwing for possible investors, and the ending is longer and has a lot more blood.

If you’re gonna watch this, I highly recommend you whip out your Netflix queue instead of buying it.

Rollerball

Movies For Guys original theatrical review

Sniff. Sniff. What’s that smell at the theater? Is there a toilet backed up and overflowing onto the floor? Did the obnoxious 3 year old in line to see Snow Dogs take a dump in his pants? Nope. It’s Rollerball polluting a screen near you!

The plot, what there is of it, revolves around a NHL wannabe played by Chris Klein who gets lured into a slightly different form of sport by his old high school buddy played by LL Cool J. The “sport” is Rollerball. Set in the year 2005, this game is all the rage in central Asia. Think of Roller Derby on steroids. The story gets muddled when Klein’s character discovers the owners will basically do anything for ratings with little regard for the players.

The problems with this movie are endless. There are huge plot holes, we’re unclear about what happened on at least one major development in the story. The editing was just horrible. The casting of pretty boy Klein in the lead role is a mistake. We need a tough guy here. And during one of the best chase scenes and most important points in the movie, for some reason they shot the whole sequence in night vision. I do not know for sure if it was, but it felt like it was shot with the nightvision mode of a cheap handheld camcorder. Also, the choreography is not slick, we get lots of fast flashy images and a great soundtrack. The problems go on and on. This feels like a movie that perhaps ran out of money halfway through filming or something and they had to piece together whatever they had and improvise the rest on a shoestring budget.

So why are we giving this celluloid feces 2 stars instead of just 1? Well, the thing is the first half of the movie when they’re just doing action rocks. There’s a couple of really great scenes with the introduction of Klein’s character and the first actual Rollerball game. However, once it tries to build the characters and plot, it all falls apart. But, the first half is worth a DVD rental. At least that way if you start to wretch once the movie turns sour, you can just skip scenes or bail completely. Definitely skip this one at the theater though, stay home and cut your toenails or something, you’ll have a better time.

Posted by John | Filed Under 2 Stars, Action, Chris Klein, DVD, Jean Reno, LL Cool J, Naveen Andrews, PG-13, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos