Os Ninjas Também Amam

This phenomenal movie was robbed of every Oscar nomination possible in '91. Superior in everyway to THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS!!!! A brilliant, unmitigated work of art!!!

I was at a recording studio with my band for a weekend when we saw this one together (There were only Dawn of the Dead, Hills have eyes 2 and this, so..). At first we didn't know what to expect, just looking for something to kill spare time. Nobody read the cover before it started rolling, so we didn't know if it was a serious martial arts movie, drama or comedy etc.

After the first five minutes all of our mouths had just dropped wide open and we all kept asking: "What the hell??" The movie started out with jokes so unfunny, childish and Buster Keaton-like and kept them coming. Since none of us were prepared for this, we started laughing quietly at first and then harder and harder as the quality of comedy kept dropping down.

Some of the stuff in this film, especially some of the one-liners became memorable as hell during that weekend as we had this running in the background repeatedly about a dozen times or so. We were all pretty tired and of course enjoying something this bad as a group with our kind of sense of humor we had really had a blast. I know it's were poor movie in it's genre but we loved it and it will live in our memories for a long time.

You like ninjas right? And sex, yeah? That's good too. Comedy? Well, we all like a laugh. Get this - this films includes all these elements yet utterly fails on every single level, to the point where, in order to get through to the end, I had to watch this film in twenty minute chunks over the course of several days.

Don't get me wrong, from the moment I opened the DVD case and poured this foul smelling, peanut ridden pile of crap into my poor, innocent DVD player, I knew I was on to a loser. It's 9 and a half weeks, done Airplane style, with ninjas, apparently written by someone with no emotional core who read in a book somewhere what a joke was, then tried to make a film about it.

It's full of sight gags (sh*te gags, more like), slapstick (crap sick, more like), terrible acting, terrible jokes a child would find simple, Benny Hill style sped up antics, and when the nudity comes around (very, very briefly) - it's silicone enhanced, which to me is like painting a ping pong ball pink and sellotaping it to my scrotum.

I actually cringed at one point when the lead actress started acting like a baby. That's no good, is it?

The plot involves a ninja/businessman called Joe Vogue fighting a businessman who wants to evict him from his apartment, with the help of some woman whom he trains to be a ninja. That's the plot. There's an actor who turns up in various, terrible roles (including a french guy and a surf dude), a woman with a moustache (Stop, my ribs can't take much more), a gay ninja (that's hilarious and co), some Jewish rabbis included because, er, rabbis are funny or something.

If I've made you interested in this film, please accept my humblest apologies. This make trash like Epic Movie and Meet the Spartans look almost sophisticated by comparison.

Here's a list of things funnier than this film: 1) Watching a small cute puppy being eaten by a crocodile. 2) Accidentally losing three fingers in an industrial accident. 3) Being caught wearing eyeglasses by Pol Pot. 4) Walking in on your wife while she's involved in a spit roast with two Premier League footballers. 5) Having Lyme's disease 6)Having ants lays eggs in your brain 7) Winning the lottery, stashing the ticket in your house, then having a massive stroke which results in locked in syndrome which means you can't tell anyone where the ticket is, therefore failing to provide for your family in their time of need. 8) Getting locked in a wardrobe full of glass and rolled down a hill. 9) Schindler's List 10) Having your entire body shoved through a one inch gap between two panes of glass 11) Staying at a hotel targeted by an IRA bomb during the early eighties 12) Getting really drunk and blacking out then coming to, finding yourself on the receiving end of a really big gay guy with a beard 13) Being trapped under ice on one of the great lakes. 14) Finding out you're related to Hitler 15) Having elephantitus of the scrotum 16) Being invited to Jeffrey Dahmer's house for a 'party' 17) Pulling a large piece of fluff from a fat guy's belly button and then eating it. 18) That film 'Threads' 19) Anything - anything is funnier than this film.

SPOILER - This film is sh*t

My review was written in January 1991 after watching the film on Republic Pictures video cassette.

The wackiness of "Airplane" eludes "9-1/2 Ninjas", a fitfully amusing spof of ninja films and Adrian Lyne's "Nine 1/2 Weeks".

Released direct to the home video maret, pic is an acceptable timekiller for fans not counting up the number of misses among scattershot, almost nonstop gags.

Film was evidently aimed more at the foreign market, where the Mickey Rourke-Kim Bassinger epic was a hti. Most of the gags here are obscure unless one has memories the bondage-oriented romance.

Michael Phenicie toplines as a guy who seems to have stepped out of a shirt ad, who becomes involved with ditzy but beautiful blonde Andee Gray. Running gag has her getting tied up and being treated as a submissive by Phenicie, but it's not very funny.

The ninjas appear as henchmen hired by mean real estate developer Robert Fieldsteel, who's trying to evict Phenicie from his apartment. Also present is a ninja hand puppet, voiced by Paul Jabara, which reduces the film to utter silliness.

Among the odder elements here are Fieldstel's Russian henchman Dimitri, played in drag with moustache by actress Barbara Leary and a weird subplot of Phenicie's earlier romance with lovely overeater Sharon Lee Jones, who put on hundreds of pounds thanks to special makeup effects.

Though this role doesn't give her much to do beyond Little Annie Fanny emoting, Gray is pleasant Phenicie is hamstrung by his Dudley Doright wooden assignment.

Not like anyone really will see this page (unless accidentally via a search for ninja-themed movies, which is totally understandable), but for your own sake, do not watch this movie. I have seen perhaps twenty movies that are on the Bottom 100 (and many that should be, like this), and I can honestly say that this, along with Charge of the Light Brigade and 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain, is the most unbearably bad movie ever.

It's not "so bad it's good," despite what some might think. It's "did human beings really think 'hey, let's make this movie' and why am I gritting my teeth so hard?" Honestly, even as spoof films go, it's terrible. Not one joke is funny. Not ONE. Some parts (the whole movie) are so unfunny, that one wonders if the script were written by anyone over the age of five.

It doesn't deserve to have the word "ninjas" in the title. It doesn't deserve to exist. Don't watch it. My friends and I did so that, hopefully, you all don't have to. Don't watch it.