It's your standard "boy finds glowing sphere, boy loses glowing sphere, boy goes to get glowing sphere back, glowing sphere saves all humanity" story. Only stupider.
It's the future, after some sort of apocalyptic event. The world has been taken over by the evil Protectorate, who control humanity by regulating the water supply from their "Aqua Bunkers". Children are taken from parents at a young age and placed in state-run orphanages, for reasons left entirely unexplained. Oh, and they all wear rollerskates (with
headlights), and engage in mandatory "skate-breaks" (recreational skating periods). The popular game is "Skateball", a sort of mix of hockey and lacrosse played on rollerskates with the object being to place the ball in a central goal. Any unruly behaviour is regulated by the E-Police, who have their own Skateball team (the Scorpions), and appear to abuse their power on a whim—the movie opens by showing a presumably illegal game that the Scorpions requested.
Fortunately for the free world, there is a terrorist cell, the Eco-Warriors, who hide in plain sight near a mindbogglingly obvious water source.
The movie itself follows the Solarbabies, a not-as-wimpy-as-they-sound (and
actually fairly successful) Skateball team from one of the Orphanages.
These guys are:None of them ever evolve beyond these character types. But one night, after the aforementioned illegal game (which is called to a halt when the Solarbabies are in the lead), their mascot, a deaf kid named Daniel, finds a glowing ball that restores his hearing. Apparently the ball is a legendary sphere, described by the local
Magical Native American culture as "Bodhi", a being which will restore Earth's waters. It's also known as the
Sphere of Longinus. Anyway, Bodhi proves his
Deus ex Machina status...then promptly lets himself be stolen by
a fellow orphan named Darstar. Daniel sets out to rescue the sphere, and the other Solarbabies follow him. Lots of
Mad Max adventures ensue, with Terra finding out the truth about herself and Bodhi ending up in the hands of mad scientist Shandray. You can probably guess where it goes from here.
This movie contains examples of:
- Did Not Do the Research: The Eco-Warriors live near a glacier that got trapped under a lava flow. That's one mighty cold glacier
- Do Anything Robot: Gentlemen, this is Terminac. He is a multi-capable masterpiece. He can squeeze the colour from a ruby or deftly pluck the eye from a living bird. And he is programmed to enjoy what he does.
- Groin Attack: Never get fresh with a girl holding a shovel.
- Hey, It's That Guy!: Peter DeLuise is Tug, Jami Gertz is Terra, Jason Patric plays Jason, James LeGros is Metron, Lukas Haas plays Daniel, Adrian Pasdar plays Darstar, and Sarah Douglas is evil scientist Shandray.
- Opposing Sports Team: The Scorpions are shown, purely to introduce Corrupt Cop characters Gavial and Strictor Grock.
- Tech Marches On: Daniel's "electric ear". Nowadays, he'd just wear a hearing aid.
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