Struggled Reagans

I read about this on 4chan and ended up getting the DVD. I can appreciate this movie for it's sheer fuckupness and ambition. Imagine power rangers fan fiction made by a perverted mind on a lot of drugs & I think you'll get the idea. It's a complicated mix of a lot of crazy ideas. Some of the scenes are baffling and the characters kind of all speak in a type of coded language of internet hyperbole. Some scenes are hilarious and won me over. Its sort of like the Japanese superhero clichés are explored in a psychological and fetishistic context. Closer to a weird lowbrow art book, or a visual poem, than your average indie film, I can honestly say it's one of the strangest movies I've seen. For that alone, it deserves some credit.

I have just enough ambient recollection of the Power Rangers to get this movie. I admit my vague memories don't fully equip me for a full appreciation of all this movie holds, but I am betting that folks who glued themselves to the set every afternoon during the height of Power Rangers popularity will fully appreciate this spoof of the low budget Japanese, sci-fi action series. And, for those folks, Cosplay Fetish Battle Drones (nee Struggled Reagans) is a grown up version of those morphin' evil battlers. From what I recall, the Power Rangers had a bunch of teenagers doing typical US teen things interrupted by battles to save the world from invading, evil monsters while wearing colorful stretchy jumpsuits. The shows were decidedly low budget. Cosplay Fetish Battle Drones has a bunch of young adults doing not so typical young adult things and sometimes battling evil invaders while wearing colorful stretchy jumpsuits. The movie is decidedly low budget. The parallels are drawn.

After viewing it, I needed to think about the movie and discuss it with others. It's not a movie that I could appreciate fully without first dissecting it – it's thought-provoking in its own strange way. How did that scene fit with the others? How does a dripping faucet tie into the powers that a Struggled Reagan receives? Who was that blue man and how did he fit into the whole of the movie? Did the bad guy win or lose? What are the Power Ranger parallels beyond the obvious ones? For me, a movie that leaves me wondering is a good movie.

Is it low budget? Yes. Did I get all of it? No. But it left me wanting to watch it again and to see more from this team. Would it help if I were more versed in the Power Rangers? Definitely. But, I challenge you to give it a shot. You might find yourself in a Blue Velvet kind of moment - you don't know what you just watched, but you know you liked it.

I'm writing this many moons after having somehow survived the screening, so I'm short on details... But I found I had to counter all the 7 star and above reviews...

This flick was AWFUL... It was essentially a group of pretentious hipster fucktards rubbing my nose in the fact that these kind of assholes can afford to live in San Francisco these days, and I can't. They made something that they seem to be proud of, but it was quite honestly the most godawful thing I've ever seen. I went on a 6 hour twitter rant that evening about the pain I suffered... I can only refer you to that (as immortalized in Jason's review in jasonwatchesmovies.blogspot.com).

Ugh.... Now I hope to never think about this abomination ever again.

pt