Rollergirls - some reviews

UPDATE: A review from a Grand Raggity Roller Girl in the Grand Rapids Press

The feuds, the friendships, the betrayals, the adrenaline rush of the game -- these things make for good television.

But of course, not everything is done right. At times, the dialogue is awkward and seems scripted, as though to provide background details not otherwise covered. The music often is too wimpy for roller derby, and there are far too many cliche camera shots of the moon or characters staring longingly out a window.

"Rollergirls" deserves credit for balancing sensationalism with reality. There is an emphasis on the disagreements that naturally arise when dozens of strong-willed women pull together to make something happen.

On the other hand, nonmainstream women of this caliber rarely get the type of positive, national attention provided by this show.

"Rollergirls" presents television audiences with a new, real type of female role model not based on stereotypes of femininity.

I say -- it's about damned time.

Newsday

Girls just wanna have fun, but the ones having "fun" on reality TV are often babelicious boneheads or man-obsessed needies. Their personal contentment is less crucial than frenzied social climbing, preening, whining and backstabbing. Does every American female really want the stilted life of the "next top model"? Isn't there something more soulful to finding success and happiness than using "feminine wiles"?

Well, yes - and some strong-willed Texas women are finding it on a banked Roller Derby track.

Tonight's fresh and funky new series "Rollergirls" follows a different kind of chick - the artsy, independent rock and roller who sets up her own competition league as a means of personal expression, camaraderie and aggression-venting. They're "feminine and athletic, sexy and threatening at the same time," as one Austin skater puts it on A&E's delicious new reality surprise.

NY Daily News

The promos for the new A&E reality series "Rollergirls" make the most out of the concept's raw materials. That inventory consists of outrageously costumed female roller-derby skaters, who act up on and off the rink while sporting such sassy stage names as Miss Conduct, Catalac, Venus Envy and, yes, Punky Bruiser.

The program, which premieres tonight at 10, is another matter entirely. It gets nothing right - not the potential sexiness, not the negligible drama and certainly not any solid shot at explaining, much less popularizing, the alleged sport of roller derby.

"Rollergirls" looks so low-rent, with crowds around the rink that may number in the thousand, viewers would be forgiven for mistaking it as an ersatz reality show - an improvised comedy like "Curb Your Enthusiasm" or "Reno 911," only performed ineptly. Certainly the games are so dull, and the women's antics so pedestrian (Let's toilet-paper a rival's house! Let's drink!), that the whole thing could understandably be dismissed as bad actors, acting badly.

Seattle Times

During a Web chat the other day, a reader asked for my favorite guilty pleasure. I replied "Bull-riding on Outdoor Life Network," because I wasn't thinking of roller derby — then.

Tonight at 10, A&E debuts "Rollergirls," a super-lively documentary series that captures the growing roller-derby craze and offers final proof that the once-artsy cable channel has said adios to its Jane Austen days.

That's OK. For one thing, "Rollergirls" is a lot more female-empowering than marriage to Mr. Darcy. For another, it's a well-balanced hoot. The reality-style tracking of the competitors, who hail from Austin, Texas, offers loads of personality along with abundant displays of flesh and NASCAR-style wrecks.

This fishnets-and-philosophy approach might seem like a cover for exploitation. But the producers, who also created the MTV hit "Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County," are sincere. And the results aptly reflect today's roller-derby scene, currently undergoing a third or fourth revival since its Depression-era origins.

AP

One of the ladies featured on the A&E’s newest series describes the action in its debut episode as “beer, booze, music, babes.” She left out cigarettes, catfights, cleavage, cussing.

It doesn’t sound very ladylike. But then these ladies answer to aliases like Miss Conduct, Venis Envy, Jail Bait.

Clever, no? Classy? No.

LA Times

From its opening moments, "Rollergirls," a new "non-scripted drama series" from A&E about the TXRD Lonestar Rollergirls of Austin, Texas — one of the first of the grass-roots roller derby leagues that have been popping up around the country over the last few years — makes an impression just by looking good.

Produced by Gary and Julie Auerbach of Go Go Luckey Productions, who are also responsible for MTV's "Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County," it's a reality show with an aesthetic consciousness. A "heightened reality" show, one might call it, but one which makes its subject palpable and which, because it is made with care, lets you care too. It's the more artful portrait, paradoxically, that paints the truer picture.

Shot with multiple cameras using longer lenses (which not only makes the camera less intrusive but reduces distortion), its visual values are highly cinematic — the colors vibrant, the images deep, the framing and composition rooted in contemporary art photography, or at least to the commercial photography and music videos that steal from it. (Jennifer Lane and Shane F. Kelly are the directors of photography here.)

These are no small things: One of the worst things about reality television is that most of it looks cheap and ugly, a mix of wide angles, dead lighting, nervous editing and restless pans to convey as much information as possible and to create superficial excitement. There's little beauty there, even in the makeover shows. "Rollergirls," by contrast, is luminous and luxuriously alive.

tag: rollergirls, roller derby, Lonestar Rollergirls