Sorry, I thought the Pinball Donut Girl story/film could have been better. Here’s how I would have written it…

I would have made the main character Julie a 1970’s dressing skater who loses her arm in a horrific skateboarding accident and has to wear a prosthetic. While recovering from her injury, she discovers pinball and discovers she’s quite good. She adopts some great flipper moves and applies “skateboard trick names” to all of them – for example, a bounce pass is now an “Ollie”. She takes a job at a donut shop (with a Skateball pinball machine) and meets the character played by Jane Wiedlin.

Jane is a pinball player too. She teaches Julie a lot of advanced flipper skills and tells Julie stories about the PAPA tournament. Julie makes it her mission to make enough money to play at PAPA. Jane and Julie become friends, but then have a falling out when Julie starts spending all of her free time with Matt…

Matt is the love interest with a special talent – picking locks and bypassing security alarms. They meet when he breaks into Jane’s donut shop at night and finds Julie playing an all-nighter of pinball there. They hook up and together they break into vacationing people’s homes so Julie can hone her pinball skills on different basement collections.

Julie makes it to Pittsburgh. Julie plays really well and becomes a tournament favorite. She even qualifies for the PAPA tournament’s playoffs. On the morning of the playoffs, Julie’s prosthetic is stolen. So, she has to play in the PAPA playoffs one-handed! But she continues to win and qualifies for the finals!

During the semi-finals, one of the pinballs malfunctions. It is substituted for another pin – Skateball, the same pin that was in Jane’s donut shop! This sets up a great finals matchup between Julie and Jane. The former friends are now bitter pinball rivals.

Wouldn’t you want to know how this ends?

Yeah, I don’t want to come down too hard on the Pinball Donut Girl movie because it was a labor of love, but the main feature just falls short on so many levels. As a movie, I didn’t find any of the characters very interesting, the plot lacking, and most of the acting cringe-worthy – although I did like the actor who played Matt.

From a pinball perspective, there wasn’t enough pinball! It never really captured the thrill of playing pinball (or collecting pinball), the grandeur of seeing the PAPA facility (hundreds of pins under one roof!) or the excitement of competing in a tournament.