This is a movie partially about rollerskating and it's set in 1972. I rollerskated a lot in 1964 and 1965 and we never had funk playing at the rink. In fact, when the rink closes on the "bad" side of town, where they always had funk, the five boys in a skating group move to the Sweetwater Rink on the "good" side of the town that had BeeGees playing.
They see that there are skaters there who are much better, but they're also snobby, so the boys decide to work harder and then enter a contest. That rink starts playing funk all the time.
At the same time, the other part is about a family where the mother has recently died. The boy, X (full name Xavier, pronounced ECKS zavier), still hasn't let her go. The little girl doesn't remember her and asks her brother. They don't know that the company where their dad was an important guy had to close and he doesn't have a job. There's a new woman across the street and she turns out to have a skating daughter. Dad goes to a party at that house and X is really angry.
When X sees the good car at a dealer and is told the dealer might take the dad on as a salesman, X finds out about Dad not having a job. They have a loud discussion, with X breaking things, about truth and life.
Then the contest comes and they do well enough to get a draw with the big-name group. The big-name is furious, he won't take a draw and he challenges X to a skate-off. They both do well and it looks like X might win when he starts doing ice-skating jumps that he'd been practicing. The people were wildly excited, but he lands on the floor with the triple loop (or something similar). The big-name group gets the money and the [idol?], but he, his family, and friends are all happy.
You know the actors are not skating the hard parts -- you see their legs or you see them at a distance -- but you still get pulled into believing they're the skaters.
I really liked this.
Tags: dvd
