I guess the producers of this one hoped that everybody had forgotten about ROLLERBALL - after all, twenty-three years is a long time. Yep, what we have here is a cheap and tacky rip-off, with none of that film's originality or intelligence. Instead FUTURESPORT is a typically bland television movie, filled with boring characters emoting, bad action scenes, and a reliance on gadgets and special effects instead of the more important things, like telling a original or interesting story. I really do hate films like this, and it's a real effort to sit through them when I do have the misfortune of catching them on television (I wouldn't dream of renting or buying this, and you shouldn't either).
Dean Cain does his usual nice-but-dumb hero role and is as vapid as the rest of the movie. Vanessa Williams is the supposed love interest but her role is a pointless one - what's the point of her character? What does she do except get kidnapped by bad guys? One can only wonder what Wesley Snipes was doing caught up in this rubbish as well (coming a year after the excellent U.S. MARSHALLS too), and for some reason he also acted as an executive producer! The rest of the cast all look pretty like catalogue models but none of them can make their characters more than unconvincing clichés.
The future (supposedly 2525) looks very much like today, except with the added attraction of computerised households and lots of digital displays up in the cities. The sport of the title is very close to the one in ROLLERBALL, except this time the players levitate on flying skateboards (yes, its as dumb as it sounds) and don't have to kill each other. The special effects of people flying are very poorly done and totally unconvincing. Action takes place outside of the rink in a couple of shoot-outs in mundane places like a warehouse and a shopping mall, where the poor editing and cheesy action (balls are used to knock out the baddies) ruin any excitement you may have expected.
Despite being R-rated, the film doesn't offer up much in the way of exploitation staples either. Nudity and language is kept to a minimum (good thing too, because when the latter is used it just sounds dumb), and the most violence is a scene of someone having his leg broken - but don't expect any blood or anything. Just what you would expect from a television movie really - watered-down entertainment for the masses. The film seems preoccupied by having silly literal jokes, like a cameraman who really is a camera-man: he has a camera sticking out of one of his eyes. There's also a computerised bug which is yeah, a bug. It quickly becomes tiring. And whoever decided on the Clinton reference obviously didn't realise how badly it would date his production. FUTURESPORT is a blandly boring television movie and a poorly-made one at that - skip it, and see ROLLERBALL instead. That's a full-blooded and intriguing futuristic sport movie and is about a million times better than this trash.
Dean Cain does his usual nice-but-dumb hero role and is as vapid as the rest of the movie. Vanessa Williams is the supposed love interest but her role is a pointless one - what's the point of her character? What does she do except get kidnapped by bad guys? One can only wonder what Wesley Snipes was doing caught up in this rubbish as well (coming a year after the excellent U.S. MARSHALLS too), and for some reason he also acted as an executive producer! The rest of the cast all look pretty like catalogue models but none of them can make their characters more than unconvincing clichés.
The future (supposedly 2525) looks very much like today, except with the added attraction of computerised households and lots of digital displays up in the cities. The sport of the title is very close to the one in ROLLERBALL, except this time the players levitate on flying skateboards (yes, its as dumb as it sounds) and don't have to kill each other. The special effects of people flying are very poorly done and totally unconvincing. Action takes place outside of the rink in a couple of shoot-outs in mundane places like a warehouse and a shopping mall, where the poor editing and cheesy action (balls are used to knock out the baddies) ruin any excitement you may have expected.
Despite being R-rated, the film doesn't offer up much in the way of exploitation staples either. Nudity and language is kept to a minimum (good thing too, because when the latter is used it just sounds dumb), and the most violence is a scene of someone having his leg broken - but don't expect any blood or anything. Just what you would expect from a television movie really - watered-down entertainment for the masses. The film seems preoccupied by having silly literal jokes, like a cameraman who really is a camera-man: he has a camera sticking out of one of his eyes. There's also a computerised bug which is yeah, a bug. It quickly becomes tiring. And whoever decided on the Clinton reference obviously didn't realise how badly it would date his production. FUTURESPORT is a blandly boring television movie and a poorly-made one at that - skip it, and see ROLLERBALL instead. That's a full-blooded and intriguing futuristic sport movie and is about a million times better than this trash.