Review of Roller Boogie

****Some Spoilers**** With the popularity of "Saturday Night Fever" back in 1977 the Hollywood crowd tried to cash in on the skating and disco craze that was sweeping Southern California around the same time and decided to make a movie to capitalize on it and thus the idea for "Roller Boogie" was born. But by the time that the movie was released around Christmas 1979 the disco and skating craze was just about over and the makers of "Roller Boogie" were stuck with a big turkey and it was long past Thanksgiving. Even if the disco/skating craze was in full bloom "Roller Boogie" would have still bombed out because of it's very disjointed music and skating sequences as well as it's silly story that would have been better if there was no story at all. The plot of the movie is so childish and simple that even the crowd that it was targeted for found it hard to take. Unlike "Saturday Night Fever" which besides the great musical score and exciting dance numbers was also a top notch drama about a young man coming of age and seeing that his future was more then just discoing the night, as well as his life, away. And after a number of trials and tribulations left his disco and partying environment to face the real world at the end of the movie. But in "Roller Boogie" there's nothing even close to that in the story. Terry, Linda Blair, is a musical prodigy when it comes to plying the flute and has received a full scholarship to the prestigious Julliard School for the Preforming Arts in New York City that coming fall. But Terries real love is to Roller Boogie the day and night away down by the beach and boardwalk in Venice Calif. To make a short story long Terry falls for Bobby, Jim Bray, who besides being very cute is also the best Roller Boogier on the boardwalk. After Bobby has a few tussles with Terry, who acted as if she wasn't interested but really was, both Terry and Bobby agree to skate in the big Roller Boogie contest at the end of the summer at the Jammer's Skating Rink as a duet but only after Booby teaches Terry the ins and outs of being a successful Roller Boogier like he is. Meanwhile the mob, yeah those guys, are trying to muscle in the Roller Boogie rink Jammer's and convert it into a big shopping mall and they finally get it's owner Jammer Delany, Sean McCory, to sell it to them after threatening to blow his brains out and burn down the rink, those mobsters always have to spoil everyone's fun. With everything that can go wrong going wrong against the Roller Boogiers, even Terries father who she ask for help turned out to be the lawyer for the mobsters front company who is to build the shopping mall, it looks like their dreams of Roller Boogieing is about to come to a sad end. But then, just like magic, before you can say Roll la' Boogie the Roller Boogiers come up with an audio tape of the mobsters shaking down Jammer Delany to sell them his roller rink that one of the Roller Boogiers taped without knowing about it, that figures, and with that tape as evidence the gig is up for the mobsters, or so we thought. But not after the customary, that movies like this that have no real story to carry themselves through the ninety or so minutes on the screen, chase scene up and down the streets and boardwalk of Venice with the mobsters getting pelted by the Roller Boogiers with truckload after truckload of fruits and veggies. The mobsters have guns and do pull them out from time to time during the movie and even point them threateningly but for some strange and unexplained reason never used them? The chase finally ends at the Jammer's Skating Rink with the cops, mobsters, Roller Boogiers and everyone else in the movie in attendance there. And then one of the Roller Boogiers sneaks into the Jammer's sound room and plays the very incriminating tape to a stunned and shocked audience where it's heard by everyone there over the PA sound system of the mobsters threatening Jammer Delany with violence if he didn't give in to their demands. With that the mobsters goose is cooked and not only do they lose their bid to get the Jammer's Skating Rink but are arrested by the police and led away to be indited and tried for criminal extortion. With all the evidence against them the mobsters would be better served if they threw themselves on the mercy of the court hoping that they would get just a long prison sentence instead of being forced to be in another Roller Boogie movie. Now happily with everything back to normal and the big Roller Boogie contest free to be held with the Roller Boogieing pair of Bobby and Terry competing you don't have to be a real genius to figure out who won the great event. An awful film that would have better served everyone involved with it if it was just left in the can and quietly forgotten about then it being released to the public and ending up embarrassing those who were in it as well as those who made it. The only reason one can have for watching "Roller Boogie" is to see Linda Blair in her tight and sexy outfits almost bursting from the seams against her very impressive and ample body. The movie "Roller Boogie" is almost impossible to find on VHS, I don't think that it's been re-issued for over twenty years, or seen on cable-TV and you can forget about ever seeing it on DVD. As far as I know the movie negative was deep sixth in the Pacific Ocean. It seems that everybody involved in the movie "Roller Boogie" would like to have it expunged from their memories like one would want to forget a very very bad dream.