Movie Review: Roll Bounce
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What Parents Should Know
Parents should know that the movie includes sexual
references (primarily, men or boys ogling tight-dressed women),
crude humor (jokes about a girl wearing braces and other boyish
shenanigans), and some language (including the n-word). As a
coming of age story, the movie focuses on the ways a family
copes with the recent death of the mother. Father-son tensions
eventually lead to a fight, where son smashes his dad's car
with a crowbar, and then tearful reconciliation.
Families can talk about the death of the mother: how do father and son handle her loss differently and also similarly? Why does Curtis lie to his son (by omission) about not having a job? How does X's roller skating serve as an outlet and also a metaphor for his emotional maturation over the summer? And what about all those brand named goods all over the movie?
Common Sense Media Review
Lively, sweet, and yes, bouncy, ROLL BOUNCE is mostly
innocuous, sometimes tedious. It's the summer of 1978 and X
(Bow Wow) and his friends spend most of their time at the
skating rink, preparing to compete in an end-of-season
skate-off, against the intimidating Sweetwater team, headed by
arrogant, beloved, hard-abbed Sweetness (Wesley Jonathan).
While X's father Curtis (Chi McBride) tries not to let on that he's lost his engineering job, the two clash frequently, over X's curfew and chores, and Curtis' dedication to fixing an old car and seeming betrayal of his dead wife, as he begins even to contemplate dating again. X turns his attention to the rink, dad finally settles for employment as a janitor, a job for which he is eminently overqualified.
The father-son drama unfolds parallel to X's own girl-distractions. As warm-up, he makes friends with Vivian's daughter Tori (the always engaging and here underused Jurnee Smollett), all awkward angles and long limbs as she learns to skate and gets pelted by immature boys' water balloons. Trying to keep up with the boys, she gives back as good as she gets when they make fun of her "heavy metal" mouth full of braces ("You need to stop chewing on them yellow crayons," she retorts, earning groans and cheers).
X's more serious panic sets in at Sweetwater, where he spots a girl he hasn't seen for a while, now blossomed into full-on stun mode. More symbolic than developed, Naomi (Meagan Good, not playing a hoodoo girl for the first time this summer) only seems to exist at Sweetwater, where she provides pretty reaction shots as X and the boys ply their routines to music by Kool & The Gang, the Bee Gees, and Donna Summer. Naomi serves as occasion for X's crucial life lesson -- don't be mean to girls who are nice.
While Roll Bounce means to be feel-good, its formulaic route to that end is often tedious. The intertwined plot points start to seem like a checklist leading to the slow-to-come denouement. Will X make it right with Naomi? Will he and dad reconcile? Will Tori be revealed as a beauty when she loses her braces? And oh my goodness, will the wisecracking, booty-ogling garbage collectors (Mike Epps and Charlie Murphy) ever find another outlet for their energies?
Packaging X's coming of age as marketable nostalgia, the movie includes plentiful references to its era, from What's Happening!!, Kool-Aid, The Mod Squad, and the Fonz to Jordache Jeans and YooHoo. Still, the most striking emblems of the era are the wigs, especially lively atop the heads of Nick Cannon (as playboy skate-dispenser Bernard) and Wayne Brady (as the enthusiastic DJ for the final skate-off). They're all for show, and they're sensational.
Families who like this movie can also check out other high-schoolish coming of age films, like Coach Carter, The Inkwell, Above the Rim, Clueless, or Fame (1980). You might also enjoy the '70s tv series referenced in Roll Bounce, The Mod Squad, What's Happening!! or Happy Days.
Common Sense Media is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing information to help parents make media and entertainment choices for their families.
