Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie

I remember reading the Roger Ebert review for the first Power Rangers movie and above all else he hated the fact that the Rangers were, essentially, color coded clones with only thin streotypes as personalities. Well, I'm dying to know what he thought of this entry. It emphasises Ebert's point in the scene where a little kid who was allowed to stand in for an injured Ranger gets the magic armor on... and in the dissolve, we see him replaced with an adult sized armored stuntperson.

I'm what kids consider a cool adult. I don't hate boy bands, I can name all the Pokemon, and I enjoyed the first season of "Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers" as I'd enjoy an old Godzilla flick. This movie was when I started to get a tad disillusioned with them.

I was browsing the worst 100 films of all time here on the IMDB, and came across this one. While, from an adult point of view, I agree with all who don't like the film at all, I think it's a little unfair because we are, after all, not the target audience. My son is 8 years old and he absolutely loves it. I feel sure that if there was a poll conducted of, say, six to twelve year olds, this one would be in their top 100! Oh dear! That was all I wanted to say, but the rules appear to insist that I provide ten lines. Right, that appears to be nine, (ignore this, it displays differently when you're typing it in) so I'll just extend it a little bit more............... OK that should be ten! No - They don't like that either so - What is an Egyptian King's favourite chocolate? Pharaoh Rocher. (Ben, aged 8).

"Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie" is a film that has to be seen to be disbelieved. The first film, 1995's "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie", brought the six butt-kicking teens from the Fox Kids series to the big screen for the first time. That movie was not all that bad. It had some decent special effects, a somewhat interesting bad guy (Ivan Ooze), and the six young actors who play the Power Rangers were fun to watch. Plus, that film had a bigger budget. But they went back to the cheapness of the TV show with "Turbo". The special effects, production design, and costumes are so cheap and cheesy that you wonder why 20th Century Fox gave the go-ahead to let these filmmakers (who are close to the TV show) make this film. Also, the script is much worse than it was in the first movie. Bulk and Skull have more screen time here. It has one of the least interesting villains of all time (actually, a villainess). It's very, very, very, very, very, juvenile. And the Power Ranger actors look as if they want to escape this atrosity. So I have one question. Why did they release this movie to theaters? This should have been released straight to video. Or better yet, release it as a TV movie, were this series started in the first place. This movie was totally inappropriate for the big screen.

* (out of four)

This movie starts out with a "martial arts" match between one of the power rangers[out of costume], and some other guy, in which the ranger is thrown from the ring, and hurts his leg or something. So they end up replacing him with his kid brother or something as equally stupid. When he morphs, he puts on the costume, then grows to the size o an adult. Anyway, they get new "zords", which are actually cars. Way to go, robots at least made the show seem cool, now they have cars. They have to rescue some little alien thing, which is the love child of an Ewok and Gizmo from gremlins. Along the way, the new pink ranger twists her ankle or something after falling into the water, and the alien heals her with his glowing finger. No ET rip off there. They take him...somewhere, and then they have this boat. The boat takes them to the island, where the rangers have to fight the old red and pink rangers who are being mind controlled. Did I mention that they have a sub plot going where bulk, skull, Jason and Kim are prisoners of the enemies? Well, yeah, they get mind controlled. During the fight, the big evil thing on the island is released, and the rangers can stop fighting Jason and Kim because the alien used his powers to fix their brains. The rangers go out to fight the big guy, who's being called all powerful, and being completely overhyped. They call out their cars, and start up this 8 minute sequence where the cars drive around, the rangers wave their hands around, and the cars go together to form a giant robot. They then proceed to hit the guy once. Once with the sword. That's all it takes, and he blows up. I sat through that whole movie, and that's the end? They kill him in one hit? The fight was shorter than the robot forming sequence. There is no excuse for that.

At first, I was expecting this movie to be like the first one - cool costumes, original zords, great special effects, etc. In that regard it was quite a bit of a let-down. It was really more of a 90-minute season premiere than an interesting stand-alone movie.

Still, it had its moments: Tommy and Kat in the jungle (that snake scene looked so fake, and when _hasn't_ Kat hurt her leg?!), the two Rangers becoming evil. And it did have a little bit of big-screen drama. The effects weren't exactly morphenominal, but they were pretty much consistent with the show.

The biggest disappointment was the sorry storyline and lack of explanation of where their new powers came from. Of course, there was purportedly an earlier storyline in which Billy returned from Aquitar in need of the Zeo crystal and a scene explaining their new powers, but they cut that part out after David Yost's unpleasant departure from the series.

To sum up, probably wasn't worth it to pay six bucks to see it, but it's definitely a must for any hardcore Power Rangers fan (especially since you kind of needed to see it for the TV season to make sense).