Rock Steady Row review: Prepare to get mightily confused in this tale of missing bicycles.
Rock Steady Row review by Kat Hughes.
Rock Steady Row Review
If you’re in the mood for something extremely quirky then Rock Steady Row is the film for you. Set in a near future where University tuition fees have become astronomical, Rock Steady Row may very well be one of, if not the, oddest film I’ve seen this year.
Events take place at Rock Steady University, an institution which looks much more like an apocalyptic wasteland than a campus. Its residents are held to ransom by the two ruling fraternities – Kappa Brutus and High Society. Both deal in bicycles which are, for some reason, a highly sought after commodity. When freshman Leroy (Heston Horwin) has his precious bike stolen upon arrival at Rock Steady University, he sets out to get it back at any cost. Soon he has Kappa Brutus and High Society in full-on war with one another. But will Leroy ever see his bicycle again?
Rock Steady Row Review
Rock Steady Row is an obvious metaphor for the current climate of the western world’s educational systems. It’s an interesting way to cover the topic, but even with the expositional narration at the beginning, it is more than a little confusing. At times it feels like you’ve missed a big chunk of the film; personally, I spent a lot of time scratching my head, wondering what I was actually watching.
Visually, the film is great, there’s a fantastic sequence near the start that sees a silhouetted Leroy against a red sky which then switches to blue. The bleached out wasteland of the campus is stylistically sound, it’s just hard to connect to it when you’re a little unsure of exactly what is happening.
Rock Steady Row Review
Not everyone ‘gets’ every film, and sadly Rock Steady Row was one such example for this writer. I wanted desperately to like it, and despite being horribly bewildered, never ‘switched-off’. If anything, I was watching really close in hope that the film would magically reveal it’s true self in a way that would make sense to me. Sometimes quirky can go to far and sadly Rock Steady Row is one of those films that does just that.
Rock Steady Row review by Kat Hughes, August 2018.
Rock Steady Row screened as part of Arrow Video Frightfest 2018.
