Rollergator (1996)

Good movie but grossly overrated

Absolutely the worst movie.

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

This film has one thing going for it: the lead actress is really cute and entirely adorable. She can't act for beans (she can barely get her lines out), but she looks good on camera. No, she doesn't wear a whole lot of clothes for most of the movie, but she brings a certain dewy-eyed fawn appeal to her scenes. Think live action version of a Japanese Anime about superhero school girls like Sailor Moon - sexy-but-innocent- and you'll have the idea. As for the rest of it: Total crap. Most egregious is the "rollergator" himself, who ranks as a special effects somewhere below the hand-puppets in "Hobgoblins" (where stagehands held the puppets against the actors at some points) and the forced-perspective rubber dinosaurs in "Future War". He doesn't even have real "arms" - just molded pictures of arms on his torso. And the actor dubbing his voice really ought to be beaten with wet noodle until he understands the difference between "spunky/street wise" and "New Zoo Review". And it's not enough to have him be a talking alligator/dinosaur - they had to make him a RAPPING one. This would have been OK if the rapping was decent, but "Rollergator"s rap forced cutesie-poo lyrics and delivery wouldn't cut it on Sesame Street, The Electric Company, or Schoolhouse Rock. Joe Estevez is in this. I usually like Joe as an actor, but this morass brings out his worst,well,everything. I could only watch "Rollergator" in short bursts because my eyes and ears kept bleeding. I finished it, looking really hard for something else beside the blond lead to like, but it was like panning for gold nuggets in a dung heap. Avoid at all costs.

Dire Ineptitude!!!!!!! For fans of bad movies only. The Rifftrax version is the recommended way to see this wretched movie.As stated above, this movie is the worst I've ever seen (dethroning the previous worst: 1964's "The Creeping Terror") being an avid fan of MST3K and Rifftrax for the past 15 years, I like to think I know something about bad movies. And let me say when the question of "what's the worst movie ever" arises, generic, ubiquitous choices like "Plan 9 from Outer Space" DO NOT hold a candle to ROLLERGATOR once you dissect these movies element by element. Those being casting, script, acting, dialogue, sound recording, editing, music, pacing, special effects, costumes, etc. ROLLERGATOR is thee absolute ultimate in terms overall badness. Easily.Starring Charlie Sheen's uncle, also known as Joe Estevez, he's the star-power of the movie, the other "actors" are total no-names, that the casting agent probably found at a local community theater (or a laundro-mat). As you can glean from the cover, along with Charlie Sheen's uncle, there's a small purple alligator (that talks!) featured in the movie; it's limply brought to life by a very lame and simplistic hand-puppet, whose tiny hands appear to be permanently fused to it's chest, as there is no arm movement what-so-ever.The basic characters are a young blonde chick on rollerblades who befriends the alligator and its with the help of her skates that it becomes the: ROLLERGATOR! Estevez plays a carnival owner, along with him comes a henchman to do his dirty work, a karate instructor, a "dark ninja" and yet another even younger blonde girl on rollerblades named "Slingshot", plus near the end there's some portly, bumbling, old biologist whose been attempting to find the alligator.Throughout the movie, almost non-stop, there is aimless "playing" of an acoustic guitar, which will have to do as far as the soundtrack goes; occasional organ tracks appear and briefly add variety, but then back come the pointless guitar wanking.As far as the dialogue goes, it often sounds improvised and shows little flow or logic and is often unintelligible. Blah, blah, blah, the portly old biologist who's looking for the alligator eventually finds the alligator, who by then of course, is a Rollergator. End of movie. The worst movie ever. (Hey all, any word on whether there's to be a 20th anniversary Blu-ray edition issued in 2016???)

Plot summary: a girl tries to keep a puppet away from Joe Estevez, who wants it to exploit it to make money to keep his carnival open. I was able to glean this from other reviews because I really couldn't get that much information from the recording itself.At least Joe Estevez was kind enough to shout all his unintelligible lines so you can make out the word "wiener" once in a while. It seems like this movie was made by this method: 1. Donald Jackson went to his job as a janitor at a carnival and accidentally left his belt-buckle spy camera on the whole time. 2. He watched it and thought it seemed kind of boring so he dubbed loud acoustic guitar music over the whole thing. 3. He added credits and called it a movie.I don't know whether you'd call this a spoiler or not, but the rollergator is a puppet that the main character carries around with her. It doesn't do any rollering. So the name is a bit of a reach. I would have gone with "Backpackpuppet" if I were in charge of naming it. If you didn't know Joe Estevez was an actor of sorts who probably required payment, you could reasonably believe this recording was made for free. Maybe he didn't know he was in it. That would explain some things.Still. A better love story than Twilight.

It infuriates me that whoever gave the director of this movie funding to make this film got so taken in. I can only hope that "legendary" film director Donald G. Jackson (of Hell Comes to Frogtown "fame") embezzled the majority of the production costs for a used Ford Fiesta or something.Make no mistake, this is not an example of "so bad it's good," this movie is "so bad it's melting my eyes and ears." Speaking of melting ears, the soundtrack is hands down the worst ever. It entails someone playing acoustic guitar (amplified) throughout the duration of the entire film (except for occasional pee and water breaks). The music has zero to do with what's going on-screen, and about 10 minutes in I was suspicious that might even be a sound loop.But worst of all is that you can't hear about 40% of the dialogue because there is music drowning it out.Not that you *would* want to hear the music. From what I can tell, the story consists of a baby, "rapping(and we use that term lightly here)", purple alligator has gotten lost. I couldn't get far enough into the movie to actually see it roller skate(I had an immense headache after an hour and ten minutes of watching the film), but apparently it does... eventually.The film *seems* to be designed for kids. What with all the skateboarding Ninjas & slingshotting little girls. But the main character in the movie is dressed in a sports bra and extremely skimpy biker trunks. Meanwhile most of the film's cinematography seems to entail zooming in on the girl's belly button while she skates around.I really don't want to spend anymore time talking about this film. Its offensive it was ever made, and I really wish I had never seen it.