ROLLER BOOGIE

year: 1979 cast: Linda Blair, Jim Bray rating: ***1/2

Low budget director Mark L. Lester takes a simple script and throws in enough distractions to make it, at the very least, entertaining enough to forget the novice acting of real-life skater Jim Bray, who always seems on the verge of laughter, blowing his lines, or both.

Linda Blair, turning in a decent performance, is a pouting rich girl who'd rather hang around the beach at her parent's stuffy mansion. She falls in love with the poor dreamer Bray, who teaches her how to skate and dance (hence the title), and eventually the duo, along with their skater friends, discover that mobsters are trying to extort the owner of their disco-haven rink.

Thus the chase-around action (Lester in his element) rolls smoothly till a predicable ending. If you expected more from a movie called ROLLER BOOGIE, that's your problem. Because it's all about the good times of the glossy late seventies era, the skating, and seeing Linda Blair dressed for summer beach weather.