*** Official "ROLLERBALL" Review Thread (1 Viewer)

[Robert Crawford]

This thread is now the Official Review Thread for Rollerball. Please post all HTF member reviews in this thread.
Any other comments, links to other reviews, or discussion items will be deleted from this thread without warning!
If you need to discuss those type of issues, please post your discussion comments in the Official Discussion Thread for this film which can be found at this link.
Thank you for your consideration in this matter.
Crawdaddy

 

[Patrick Sun]

I'm just here to confirm that the bad reviews this film is getting are well deserved.

The narrative is horrible, the direction is lazy, the stunts are so-so, the actual game of Rollerball is worse than Quidditch from Harry Potter. The acting is average or worse. I felt sorry for Jean Reno who tried his best to chew up the scenery, but it was already levelled with a tepid screenplay.

I give it a grade of D, or 1 star.

 

[Alex Spindler]

This movie was impressively bad. Let me see if I can follow the logic behind this movie. Here is the actual meeting minutes from the studio executives who conceived this mess:
Ok, it's become abundantly clear that we have no creativity left. Let's dig down into our archives and find a movie with a small following that we can rape into an unrecognizable and unwatchable pile.
Hey, we have this Rollerball movie. It seems to be a slightly respected sci-fi film.
Sci-Fi? I hate sci-fi. Costs too much and it requires some thought. Take all the sci-fi out of it. What do we have left?
Ummm, well, I guess we have a film about a violent sport with rollerskates and motorcycles.
Great! We can make this movie ultra violent with lots and lots of sex. And bone crunching stunts.
Okay, who do you want for the star player of Rollerball?
Well, any respectable actor would see that this is an empty film with no meat to it and terrible dialogue. Heck, get one of those Josh Hartnett or Freddie Prinze Jr types.
They both turned us down as being beneath them as actors. We did get Chris Klein though. BTW, the script looks to be pretty expensive for some reason, even after we took out all the sci-fi elements
Really? Okay, we need to make this film PG-13 then so we can get the really really dumb kids to see it and make a few quick bucks.
But....then we can't show any violence and no nudity. We've already shot that stuff
Just digitally erase all the nudity and blood. Nobody will notice.
Okay....So we have a sci-fi film without the sci-fi elements, expensive for no reason, billed as being sexy and violent without any blood or nudity, starring someone we don't care about, and lacking any of the portions of the original story that made the original a fairly good film.
Yeah. It sounds like a winner to me too.
Particularly bad was a 15 minute section that was filmed entirely with nightvision gear (thing green and grainy). None of the actors is wearing night vision gear, mind you. The director just felt like shooting it that way.
The film gets zero stars from me. The dialogue is laughable (did Chris Klein actually say 'baubles'? ), the stunts are very weak, little attempt is made to create recognizeable villans on the enemy team, no attempt was made to deviate from the White Zombie and death metal musical themes despite the fact that it take place entirely in Asia, and the acting is flat out terrible.
How this movie ever got made, or managed to spend $100 million, is beyond me.
I recommend all of you wait for the DVD release. At least there's a fair chance that they will include Rebecca Romijn's nudity and at least some of the violence that should have made up the bulk of the film.

 

[Matthew Chmiel]

I agree with what Patrick had to say, but he didn't mention the horrible cinematography (night vision anybody?), the awful sound effects, and the rapid editing was just too much to take.

MGM owes me $5.25 for wasting 98 minutes of my life. One star at the most.

 

[Alphonse Brown]

This crap is by far the worst movie I have ever seen in my 30 years.
The story was pitifully bad, the acting was horrible...not even laughably horrible...just plain horrid, and any movie that induces a nightlong migraine, thanks to the approximately 20 minute section in night vision, deserves to have all prints burned and buried!
The edits to make it PG-13 were painfully obvious.
A few examples:
The first guy who got his head swatted had what the edits show as clear sweat sprayed from his head upon being swatted...when later, they replay that same scene on a monitor to show that blood sprayed from his head.
The entire nearly bloodless bloodbath toward the end shows Chris Klien getting his ass kicked, but they digitally change the blood to look like sweat...and his cuts are black for petessakes!
Not to mention the airbrush jobs they did on Rebecca and minus all but one "f" word, how many times would I friggin have to hear the word friggin??
I think what really disappointed me the most is that it was a pretty big audience and a good majority of them clapped at the end! I was shocked! Then, the lights came up and it was a bunch of 13-15 year olds.
I guess MGM got the crowd they wanted. :rolleyes