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'Roll Bounce' takes some pretty hard falls

By BOB LONGINO
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The ultimate moment in "Roll Bounce," the new roller-skating movie set in the late 1970s that can't firmly decide whether it's a knee-slapping spoof or a teary-eyed melodrama, may be the entrance of Chicago's he-man, Afro'd, roller-rockin' Sweetness.

Portraying the film's sinister, roller-skating phenom, actor Wesley Jonathan strides on skates into the neon-lit rink in flowing, cream-colored polyester, his preening posture screaming the Travolta aura of the disco-swirling "Saturday Night Fever" and his open shirt revealing a muscled chest with pecs that explode like Vesuvius.

Fox Searchlight

'Roll Bounce'

The verdict: Mildly entertaining and occasionally funny, but too often a roller skating movie that falls — sometimes fairly hard.

Director: Malcolm D. Lee
Starring: Bow Wow, Chi McBride, Mike Epps, Wesley Jonathan, Meagan Good
Run time: 112 minutes
Release date: Sept. 23, 2005
Rating: PG-13 for language and some crude humor.
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We haven't seen this much overblown onscreen manhood since Ricardo Montalban burst onto "Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan" with enough chest prosthetics to poke out a bystander's eye.

Jonathan's entrance in the mildly entertaining, middle-drawer "Roll Bounce" is funny. As is the audacity of his champion roller-skating crew — a troupe of four guys of varying racial diversity who tout their manhood in glittered, Sansabelt pants, and who fire off sniffy putdowns of other skaters.

Theirs is a world of bluster that blooms in the family-centered universe of roller skating. And "Roll Bounce" pits them against an upstart, youthful team from Chicago's Southside, led by hip-hop artist and Jermaine Dupri protege Bow Wow, who's now 18 and has shed the label "Lil'" from his money-making name.

Make no mistake, "Roll Bounce" is Bow Wow's movie. As the talented skater and emotionally troubled teen Xavier, he's got the screen time and, in at least one scene, the acting chops to prove it.

Set in Chicago and featuring Midwestern slide skating and other tricks unique to that region, "Roll Bounce" is the first of two roller-skating movies that will come out of Hollywood in the next year. Atlanta music and film impresario Dallas Austin recently served as producer of his own skating movie filmed in Atlanta for Warner Bros. Still untitled and set to debut in 2006, it stars local rapper T.I. as leader of a skating crew and will display metro Atlanta roller talent.

First to careen out of the chute, "Roll Bounce" is not quite the overall entertaining vehicle one might hope. It's certainly unclear what kind of movie director Malcolm D. Lee ("Undercover Brother," "The Best Man") intended to make.

The film starts as a lame comedy with Bow Wow's squad of roller-skating buddies. They often look and sound like they're acting, and Lee packs their hijinks with uninventive see-the-characters-go-whoa reaction shots.

Eventually, Lee folds in a weepy subplot involving the recent loss of Xavier's mother and the teen's troubled relationship with his dad. If this aspect works only sporadically, it does involve two of the film's better scenes, including a nighttime conversation between Bow Wow's character and his little sister that shows how naturally the hip-hop star can act onscreen.

On the flip-side, however, is a slo-mo scene involving a can of Pepsi that, if it isn't gratuitous product placement, is certainly bad filmmaking.

It takes forever for "Roll Bounce" to reach the point where Jonathan's Sweetness shows up, but when the focus moves to the action in the rink and the "skateoff" finale, the film seems finally to begin to accelerate.

Set in 1978, the movie sports songs like Bill Withers' "Lovely Day," Carl Douglas' "Kung Fu Fighting" and Chic's "Le Freak." The cultural references come fast and furious. Listen hard to catch one put-down of a woman ("All right, Mahogany," the guy says, dissing her with the title of Diana Ross' 1975 fashion-exotic film) and a lively quip involving the hair product Lustrasilk.

Much less successful is the appearance of Nick Cannon in the comedic role of a self-involved skating rink employee who intentionally dresses like Jimi Hendrix. Cannon seems to have been given free reign to display his comedic abilities. If only he were funny.

Cannon's part of the reason "Roll Bounce" is creatively bouncy. It's worth watching, and then it's not. It's entertaining, and then it's not.