I guerrieri del sole

This film is a riot. It's badness is epic. It is hard to know where to begin in terms of describing the experience of Solarbabies, but one could start by saying that a central episode involves a chase scene of children dramatically escaping from a futuristic special-forces police force by ROLLER SKATING through the DESERT. I am not making this up.

The completely random plot and incredulously goofy bonding/friendship scenes between the child-prisoners and their glowing-ball alien friend could only have been the product of coked-out brainstorming sessions of Hollywood types in the 80s.

Are children lovable prisoners of a Nazi-Fetish, post-apocalyptic corporation/government agency that inexplicably decides to profit by running a child-labor camp in the desert? Check. Are the children also forced to play an arena sport involving roller skates? Check. Does a glowing alien ball appear randomly and befriend the children, with no apparent connection to anything else in the film? Check. Do the children breakdance with the glowing alien ball-friend? Check. Does the glowing alien ball require the children to escape the prison and go on a quest? Yep. Do the children "escape" simply by roller-skating away from the "prison" (through a desert)? Um, yes. Does the glowing alien ball-friend require the children to join hands in a ritualized new-age circle of friendship/love in order to achieve its full glowing alien ball powers? You betcha.

If this movie were any better, I would give it one star. But it charges so far past the normal constraints of the badness boundaries that it comes out on the other side and emerges as something that is actually pretty entertaining and fairly compelling. The bar starts out low, but the filmmakers just keep on lowering it, going way past the zero point, and actually discovering new ways to make a bad movie worse. It is like art in reverse.

Set 41 years after a cataclysmic event that left much of the planet a barren wasteland, the remaining water is now under the control of the totalitarian Eco Protectorate. The Protectorate runs several "Orphanages" where wasteland youth are held and educated to obey. A group of children, known by the sports team name, Solarbabies, find a glowing orb named Bohdi who can not only speak but has powers that seem mystical in nature. After Bohdi is taken the Solarbabies take it upon themselves to rescue Bohdi before it can be destroyed by the Protectorate.

The making of Solarbabies is far more interesting than the movie that resulted from it. The brainchild of Douglas Anthony Metrov, Metrov's intention was to emulate the "guerilla film making" style of his friend Abel Ferrara. Originally intended to be a low budget film about children in a post apocalyptic world (described by Metrov as "Little Rascals in the future") the movie gained the attention of Mel Brooks as a potential producing project for his company Brooksfilm. Brooks was eventually convinced to invest more money in the project because of supposed blockbuster potential of the film (yes seriously) and the budget balloon from $5 Million to $20 Million with Metrov being kicked off the project and replaced with Alan Johnson which compounded with bad weather, on set tensions, and general ineptitude led to expensive reshoots, unusable footage, and drove brooks just short of bankruptcy that was only averted by selling the film at a loss to MGM and healthy profits from Brooksfilms other sci-fi film of the year, the David Cronenberg directed re-imagining of The Fly. While the story behind Solarbabies is tumultuous and rich in drama, the movie itself is a boring, confusing, derivative mess that can't even be enjoyed in a "so bad it's good way"

From the get go the movie makes absolutely no sense. The movie supposedly takes place in a world of extreme water scarcity which has lead to a breakdown in civilization save for the Eco Protectorate which managed to establish power by establishing bunkers for the water that is then rationed out in exchange for allegiance and obedience. The protectorate is filled with soldiers called E-Cops who are laser gun wielding henchman complete with lousy aim who wouldn't feel out of place in Star Wars or more fittingly Spaceballs. Outside the Protectorate however is a world of roving marauders who wear tattered rags, dress like Native American tribes, or dress like Bedouin Arabs and there's no rhyme or reason to this world.

The story doesn't fare much better. The Orb Bohdi is basically E.T. if you took away the personality and movement of E.T. and instead replaced it with a glowing volleyball. Bohdi can't speak except for barely audible giggles and chirps, and despite having powers to cure deafness and bring about indoor rainstorms Bohdi spends most of the movie doing absolutely nothing aside from being carried from place to place with no clearly defined end point or objective. The plot is a flabby shapeless mass where characters don't have clear motivation, characters have no clear reason for existing, and actions in one scene don't carry over to another. Sometimes a scene doesn't even know how to transition to another, in the midpoint of the movie where Bohdi is stolen, there's no scene where the characters find out it's been stolen but there is a scene where they discuss one of their group has gone after Bohdi. It's a frustrating movie from beginning to end because the story has no engine driving it nor a goal to which it's approaching.

The acting is at least decent even if the characterization is flat and nonsensical. Adrian Pasdar, Jason Patric, Richard Jordan, and Jami Gertz all give energized performances and have decent charisma. Lucas Haas unfortunately isn't so lucky. Throughout the movie Haas maintains a near constant look and feel of "wide eyed whimsy" that makes him one note and somewhat grating. I don't blame Haas for this as he is a good actor (see the criminally underrated ghost story Lady in White for proof) and it's clear that bad direction/writing is most likely to blame.

Solarbabies is an absolute mess of a movie. It shamelessly borrows from Mad Max, E.T., Star Wars, and pretty much every Sci-Fi/Blockbuster film of the 10 years that preceded it and has no idea how to make them engaging. The plot has no drive, the characters are flat, and is simultaneously boring and headscratchingly confusing. It's just a stupid, stupid movie that tries to ape contemporary blockbuster trends without having any idea how they're supposed to work.

"Solarbabies" apparently wasn't given much of a theatrical release by MGM. After seeing the movie, I can understand why they apparently decided to cut their losses. To be fair, the outdoor locations are pretty eye-catching (the movie was shot in Spain), and the sets look like some serious money and time was spent on their construction. But aside from those things, there's not much more praiseworthy to bring up. The movie is really confusing at times, with several plot points brought up so suddenly in the narrative that I'm pretty confident I'm correct in thinking the movie was severely cut in the editing room, taking away the introduction and explanation to these plot points. Despite this editing, there are still plenty of ridiculous things to be found in the movie, like the youths getting around in this post-apocalypse world on roller-skates. But most of these ridiculous things are just mildly amusing, not insane enough to make this worth seeing on a camp level. Will anyone like it? Well, I have an idea that (very young) kids - especially kids who have not seem many better fantasy movies - might get some enjoyment out of it, but I'm sure they'll still question a lot of the movie's incoherent moments.

It's like this movie was made to be parodied by Mystery Science Theater. It starts out with a bunch of teenagers skating through a DESERT of all places (you know, rock, sand and roller skates-- a match made in heaven) and just gets worse from there. Imagine a teen street hockey team fighting against a major-cliché heavily armored "Nazi regime" army... and somehow not getting killed in the process.

A blue ball comes from outer space for no known reason in the universe and despite evidently having the power to do just about anything it cares to do, can't manage to keep itself from being captured and nearly destroyed. And why? Well, because it relies on a 10-year-old boy as the source of its power. (Or so we guess. There's really no way to know for sure, because they never explain that part at all.)

This is so bad it's bad bad. It's one of those movies that all the way through the viewer is asking, "Why am I even watching this?" but we can't break away because... what's gonna happen in the end? Let me save you some time without spoilers: not much happens. Kids out-skate killer desert vehicles, kids out-skate blasters and heavily-armed soldiers, kids out-skate exploding buildings. Evidently in the far future roller skating is some kind of super-power because boy howdy, it sure works for this group!

Ethel, pass the popcorn and a clothespin, 'cos this one's a stinker.

After about 20 years of having little more than vague memories of this movie rollerskating about in my head, I finally broke down and re-watched Solarbabies.

All I can say is, well, bless them for trying. It really isn't a BAD movie... it does manage to be entertaining even though it occasionally drags. The only problem is that it borrows a lot from other movies and never seems to decide on a style of its own.

Overall I didn't feel as drawn in to the story as I'd hoped, but despite the somewhat vague plot and generic characters, it was still good fun. And if nothing else, it teaches us that all we really need to set things right in the world are friendship and roller skating. And maybe a magic ball from outer space.