CineBad!!!

How could I resist “spectacular sci-fi action and adventure on blazing skates?!” The Solarbabies are “the far-off future’s spunkiest group of roller-skating rowdies!”

It’s the year 41 (you know, the year 41 in the far-off future) and the Earth is a post-apocalyptic desert starved of water. The few survivors of the human race live a meager existence under the Protectorate, a kind of generically evil world dominating bad guy government thing.

The aforementioned spunky Solarbabies live in a prison camp / orphanage run by the evil Protectorate. When they’re not busily engaged in manual labor or other activities designed to crush their puny wills, they sneak out to the desert to play skateball against their arch enemies, the Scorpions. Skateball is kind of like a dumb version of Lacrosse played on roller skates by bad actors. The Scorpion’s coach is the evil Grock, leader of the E-Police, the Protectorate’s henchmen. He drives a little black dune buggy and wears a blue leather Nazi outfit.

Anyway, to make a long story short, the E-Police show up one night while the Solarbabies are playing skateball, they run into a mine shaft, find a mysterious glowing orb with psychic / magical powers, take it home, have it get stolen, and break out of the orphanage to find it, even though to escape means possible “surgical alteration” at the hands of the E-Police. They didn’t actually show anybody get surgically altered. I was bummed.

They actually sneak out of the orphanage because their Little Kid Mascot, Daniel, (played annoyingly by Lukas Haas) already went out looking for it, and they want to find him. The orb’s name is Bodi, and it has a special relationship to Daniel. It already cured him of deafness (“you’re not even wearing your electric ears!”) and made it rain in his bedroom. Anyway, they all set off across the desert, in search of Daniel, and then Bodi, encountering bad guys and secret tribes and all sorts of stuff along the way.

Eventually they must rescue Bodi from Grock and his Evil British Girlfriend, a mad scientist-type with shocking blue eyeshadow and a pointy white leather jumpsuit. They want to destroy the Orb because it’s going to save mankind, or something. I wasn’t too clear on that point. But you get to see the evil lady’s hands burst into flame, so who cares?!

Watch as the Solarbabies escape bad guys by roller skating over a canyon, or by rolling down a cliff in old tires. Drool as the Solarbabies don their red, white and blue skate outfits (the Scorpion’s outfits are skimpy black leatherette.) Thrill to big 80’s hairdo’s! “Say hello to Sparky” (my favorite quote) as the Solarbabies’ resident tech nerd, Metron, electrifies the staircase the bad guys are standing on! “Let it be squared fair,” as the leader of the Scorpions bickers over skateball rules with the Solarbabies’ leader! Any way, you can’t go wrong!