Rollergator
Rollergator
| 08 August 1996 (USA)
Rollergator Trailers

A young teenage girl tries to help a small, purple-colored, jive-talking alligator escape from the clutches of a greedy carnival owner as well as as assortment of various characters so he can be reunited with his owner.

Reviews
lemon_magic

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.

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Idiot-Deluxe

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???)

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dsgraham212002

I have only looked at the recent short from Rifftrax and, from what I saw, to give this zero-budget 'thing' any stars should be a crime; since IMDb requires a minimum of 1, that's all it could 'possibly' get.Everyone involved with "Rollergator" must have known they were making the equivalent of 'cinematic fecal matter'. Cheap and amateurish in every imaginable aspect of film-making, this pile of celluloid dung's only two redeeming qualities were the presence of the self-loathing (I suspect) Joe Estevez who may have thought:'I know full-well what I'm getting into, but don't care because I'm expected to be in intentionally-crappy films. How awful can I be in this one?') and the not-so-bad-looking blonde actress, Sandra Shuker, although her thespian skills border on non-existent. That's really it, folks. It's that bad.The talking (!) baby alligator puppet would have even been improved by merely sewing eyes on a sock...you'd get the same effect, really. I guess it's all an intentional joke because it looks so obviously-fake. Anyone who's heard of 'Ed the Sock' has seen this before and just as believably; only Ed's perpetual cigar was missing.Saying, 'This is the worst (fill in the blank) I've ever seen, etc.' is asking for it. Something even more horrifically-cheap and stupid may actually be possible...a shuddering thought, considering what I saw of this thing.

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gridoon2018

Well, if the title hasn't already clued you in, just a basic outline of the "plot" should be enough to help you decide if this is the kind of film you would ever be interested in watching: young girl (around 18-20) who likes roller-blading befriends a purple TALKING baby alligator and tries to protect him from a greedy carnival owner who wants to use the verbally-not-challenged creature as a sideshow freak. She is helped by a female karate instructor and another, even younger roller-blading girl equipped with a mean little slingshot. The apathy with which everyone accepts the existence of a talking alligator is a surreal element, but mostly the movie is concerned with trying to be funny, and rarely succeeds. It is made with all the production values and technical elegance of an amateur home video, but the most annoying thing about it must be the soundtrack, which has guitars playing literally non-stop, from the first second to the last, and sometimes so loudly you can't even hear the dialogue (not that you miss much!). Despite all that, it's hard to fully hate this film, maybe because it clearly aims so low and proudly wears its cheapness on its sleeve. Or maybe because Sandra Shuker is such a sweetie-pie. (*1/2)

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