Solarbabies
Over the weekend I saw this film from the magical year
of 1986 called Solarbabies. It
was a mish mash of E.T. and Mad Max. You might ask how it’s possible to combine
those two films. E.T. is one of
the most beloved family entertainment features of all time. They even recently used advanced technology
to make it even more family-friendly by digitally turning pistols into
walkie-talkies in a scene where some federal agents are chasing E.T. with what
were pistols. Mad Max is a bloody
badassed asskicker movie that only achieved moderate mainstream appeal through
some weird fluke. But Solarbabies
finds that happy medium for the one or two people out there who actually felt
torn between E.T. and Mad Max.
I can’t wait until these filmmakers make a picture for people like me
who want a happy medium between Point Break and some porn. Hopefully they’ll serve a combination of
turkey and lamb at the cinema when they show it.
The movie takes place in a Mad Max world where
it’s the future and massive draught has turned the world into desert where
people dress like biker pirates and ride around fighting each other for
resources. Just like in the Mad Max
movies, even though after the apocalypse nobody has bothered rebuilding a safe
functioning society, they have invested massive efforts into designing cruel
automobiles that never existed before the apocalypse. However everything else is old and damaged by
the comet or nuclear war or whatever it was that destroyed everything.
The film takes place in an orphanage where babies are
kidnapped and raised through brainwashing to ultimately serve as soldiers for
an aspiring fascist of the desert. Even though
the kids are all raised together from infancy in captivity through the same
brainwashing system, the black kid still grew up to beatbox, breakdance, and
speak a dialect of jive that nobody else in his environment speaks. There’s also a kid who was stolen from
gypsies, and even though in the brainwashing orphanage the children are never
told about their pasts and the hall monitors are fascist riot cops, the
administration doesn’t mind that the gypsy kid wears radically different
clothes, speaks to owls, and spends all sorts of time plotting things by
himself.
I guess it doesn’t matter that much since all the kids
are pretty rebellious in this movie.
Even the one kid who actually wants to join the fascist army when he is
old enough has absolutely no discipline and continually breaks all the
rules. But he breaks the rules to be
sadistic and mean-spirited so I guess that’s why the fascists cut him so much
slack.
Needless to say, their brainwashing isn’t very
effective. The main brainwashing
technique is that they organize school dances and have giant television
monitors of riot cops smashing unarmed people’s heads to accompany the dance
music while the kids get down and boogie.
We discover that the titular Solarbabies are a sports
team within the orphanage that play a game that is a combination of lacrosse
and hockey on rollerskates, which makes you suspect that this may be the first
Canadian post-apocalyptic dictatorship to ever grace the cinema screen. There are several teams within the orphanage.
At one point two of the fascists are
discussing exactly what the audience is thinking; what kind of name is
Solarbabies? The one fascist prefers
that sports teams have menacing names like The Scorpions or The Gestapo, but
the other retorts that the Solarbabies don’t need menace since they always seem
to win. The movie itself also uses the
same approach of lowered expectations. I
mean what do you expect of a film called Solarbabies?
The real story starts when the Solarbabies discover a
magic orb. They discover the orb while
playing a game at the forbidden arena.
It’s not really clear why the arena is forbidden seeing as it’s right
next to the orphanage in the middle of the desert. The headmaster at the orphanage says he can’t
protect kids “out there”, but it is part of the orphanage. The arena is also a specially constructed
facility that can only be used for the rollerhockey sport that is only played
at the orphanage, so that makes it clear that the orphanage built it. It even has floodlights and a buzzer that
goes off whenever somebody scores. So,
maybe making it the “forbidden arena” is just a test of the kids’
discipline. I don’t know.
They all play with the magic orb and feel
enlightened. But then the gypsy kid
steals the orb and bolts off into the desert.
The Solarbabies all run around the desert chasing the orb which
ultimately falls into the possession of the fascist regime. The Solarbabies are made up of a hunky guy, a
cute pre-Jordana Brewster chick, a nerdy guy, the jive talkin’ black kid, a
little kid, and a second hunky guy.
You’d think since there were two hunky guys one must be expendable and
die. But sorry. I was disappointed, too. Not even the black kid dies. And this was an 80s movie.
Along the way the chick Solarbaby finds the family
from which she was abducted. It turns
out they’re part of an underground resistance against the fascist state. They fight the fascists through
non-confrontational hiding and consider survival their victory. The way they word it in the movie makes them
sound less like pussies than how I’m putting it here. The chick decides she wants to live with her
real peaceful family, but then the other Solarbabies only have to ask her twice
before she abandons the peaceful commune and rejoins them in a rollerskate
assault against the fascist stronghold.
At the stronghold the fascists are trying to crack the
orb open. The lady in charge of busting
the orb employs crushing clamps and electrodes in what may be the most extended
ball torture scene I’ve watched since Casino Royale. So the kids use a combination of Home
Alone and Todd Bertuzzi tactics to infiltrate the fascist stronghold and
rescue the orb and feel the enlightenment or whatever.
I think this film is about how adults take things too
seriously and don’t appreciate magic and wonder. Because adults lack the imagination of a
child they just stand there holding machine guns while little sixty pound kids
on rollerskates bodycheck them and hit the self-destruct button on their
fascist military orb-busting complex.
This film also reminds us that cruelty and fascism are bad, in case
you’d forgotten. So yeah, authority
figures suck, listen to your orbs, end of story.
Winner of the lifetime disgrace award for Mila Jonovich.
Ridley Scott’s
masterpiece is unicornier than ever!
DEBS: They’re
Crime-Fighting Hotties with Killer Bodies
May the Jordanafication and Brewsterization of Hollywood continue.