Power Rangers

Watch Movies TV -***DISCLAIMER*** The following review is entirely my opinion. If you comment (which I encourage you to do) be respectful. If you don't agree with my opinion (or other commenters), that's fine. To each their own. These reviews are not meant to be statements of facts or endorsements, I am just sharing my opinions and my perspective when watching the film and is not meant to reflect how these films should be viewed. Finally, the reviews are given on a scale of 0-5. 0, of course, being unwatchable. 1, being terrible. 2, being not great. 3, being okay. 4, being great and 5, being epic! And if you enjoy these reviews feel free to share them and follow the blog or follow me on Twitter (@RevRonster) for links to my reviews and the occasional live-Tweet session of the movie I'm watching!   I wanna make some snarky comment about how these Rangers weren't "go-going," but there's no go-go in me to do it.

Power Rangers – 2 out of 5

The Mighty Morphing Power Rangers came onto the scene at a time where I was just old enough to not be the target demographic but also at an age where I started to develop my taste for cheesy and poorly produced stuff.  I didn’t enjoy the Power Rangersin a genuine way but enjoyed it because I thought it was so dumb.  The bad acting, the silly bad guys, the English audio dubbing for certain characters, etc., etc., etc. all worked in concert to make a product that I found very amusing.  That being said, when I first heard of this film reboot of the franchise, I was kinda interested.  As silly as I found the show, I wasn’t going to deny that the property had some potential.  When the likes of Bryan Cranston, Elizabeth Banks and Bill Hader were announced to be involved and when I saw the first trailer, I was pretty interested and thought that maybe this movie would be entertaining and kinda cool.  Those impressions proved to be inaccurate for me.

Before they even got to the top of the steps, three of them sneezed in their
helmets and the other two had their lens fogging up from breathing.

After suffering a horrendous defeat on the primitive planet Earth, Power Ranger Zordon (Bryan Cranston) buries five Power Coins in hopes they will one day find those strong enough to take them and become the new Rangers.  Ages later, a group of teenagers; Jason (Dacre Montgomery), Kimberly (Naomi Scott), Billy (RJ Cyler), Zack (Ludi Lin) and Trini (Becky G.), stumble upon the Power Coins in an old gold mine.  The five quickly realize that the coins are changing them and giving them incredibly skills and abilities.  Their discovery leads them to an ancient ship that houses the robot Alpha 5 (voiced by Bill Hader) and the consciousness of Zordon.  Their mission is to train them and get them to morph into the fantastic Power Rangers so they can stop the evil Rita Repulsa; a vile and power-hungry woman who plans to create a creature called Goldar and use it to help her destroy the planet and take its hidden power source.

I guess he's not the one who knocks anymore, huh?  Amirite?
Because he has no arms and is just a face in a wall...I'm sorry.

Fanboys HATED this newly redesigned Alpha 5.
It's like they didn't remember how freakin' stupid
the original Alpha 5 was.

I really wanted to like Power Rangers but ultimately found it to be a feature that suffered from underdeveloped writing and an overall tone that just couldn’t seem to lock down what it wanted it to be.  The whole feature kept jumping from being cartoonish, overly silly, and more akin to the tone of the original television show to something that really wanted to be dark and sorta gritty (but, in a PG sorta gritty way…even though the movie was PG-13).  One minute you have goof ball shenanigans and slapstick and the next you have Rita Repulsa chewing scenery and saying how she’s going to kill the Rangers.  Then you cut you Alpha 5 cracking wise before returning to Zordon seriously condemning the Rangers for not progressing fast enough.  Adding a dash of comedy to a gritty, action-based feature is fine and a lot of properties make it work but this movie just wasn’t blending these two elements at all for me and it resulted in a film that I could neither take seriously nor find amusing at all.

Sure, this looks like a dumb bad guy but, when compared to the show,
it's pretty much on par with the franchise.

What's truly amazing is how they all looked so comfortable
in their suits and not like it was hard to move
in them or even like it was difficult to breathe.

I additionally had a hard time getting invested in the story as so much of the characters and mythology feels underdeveloped.  Rita is threatening in theory but since we really only get tastes of what she’s capable of, her threat level isn’t too high and it made her a weak antagonist.  Similarly, most of the Rangers are super bland and uninteresting as the story doesn’t really feel too committed to diving into their personalities.  Hell, it’s sad to say but Trini and Kimberly were essentially interchangeable from a personality perspective and the only reason that Jason stood out was because he was declared the leader—beyond that, he had no real defining traits that made him memorable or even a presence on screen that demanded attention.   There were some interesting elements that involved Zordon and his history with Rita that I would have liked to see feathered out some more but the film seemed like it was rushing so often and like it was actively trying to match the deadline the story contains.  I understand the crew only have so long to train but the film still could have done something to make it feel like they were on a deadline and were working on developing their relationship but, as it stands in the final product, what I saw was a group who never really felt like a team (or even individuals) and I was just supposed to accept that they became one because that was where the story was at.

I never thought I would say this...but the overacting that we saw in Jason of the
television show was better than a Jason who just is kinda...well... just there.

Banks is fine...but I will admit she was gorging herself on the scenery.  I think she had to make
up for the rest of the Rangers.

On the performance side of things, the cast is doing a fairly decent job.  Bryan Cranston is bringing his all to the role, Bill Hader is amusing as Alpha, and Elizabeth Banks is okay, albeit a little silly, as Rita.  As for the kids, most of the time you don’t really get to see them do enough where you’re able to gauge how they are.  They’re serviceable and occasionally, in the case of RJ Cyler as Billy, they are fun but too often they are victimized by the weak script and are never really given their moments to really showcase what they are capable of.  As it stands, most of the time the kids feel like they are just going through a base-level, just passable effort and I see that more because of the writing rather than their talents.

Cyler really was the most attention-grabbing and entertaining Ranger.

Power Rangers has some elements working for it in the forms of Bryan Cranston’s performance, the character of Billy, and there’s no denying that this film could have been a very exciting summer blockbuster.  However, the film is undone by a very underdeveloped plot and an enormously unfocused tone that kept jumping back and forth from being silly kid’s stuff and slightly gritty material.  It never could find that balance to be equally exciting and amusing and what I found myself left with was a movie that was just too goofy to be enjoyable.

Go-Go Gratuitous Cameo!