Power Rangers (2017) -- a review

I was in my late twenties when The Power Rangers made their debut on TV many moons ago, well over the age range of the primary target audience for the series. But even though I never saw the TV series, I remember the furor that it caused, particularly among toy collectors. Back then, I was collecting action figures from Star Trek, which was enjoying an explosion of popularity alongside the Power Rangers. Despite several TV incarnations, along with a pair of movies released at the peak of the PR zeitgeist, I never felt the need to visit Angel Cove, the home of the Power Rangers. Until now.

I don’t know what possessed me to watch the latest reboot of the PR franchise, other than boredom on an extremely hot (pre)summer day. But what was interesting was how much I enjoyed it, despite not knowing anything about the mythology. Maybe that’s because director Dean Israelite eases the viewer into the PR wackiness by introducing the Rangers as regular teenagers who meet up one day while serving in detention. It’s like having the Power Rangers meet the Breakfast Club (Would the song be called “Don’t you Morph about me?”)!

But it really plays more like PR meets Chronicle, the found footage superhero film that came out a few years ago, in the same understated way that the teens discover their powers and become Rangers. Israelite still moves the story along at a brisk speed, never letting the pacing sag, and while the Rangers are played by unknowns (who handle their acting chores admirably), Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston is recruited as the great big giant head who serves as the team’s overall Yoda/guru, while Elizabeth Banks looks like she’s having a grand old time chewing the scenery as the villain (“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours!”).

The main problem is that after a proper build up, when the teens finally become the PR (in the last half hour of a two hour movie), it’s somewhat anticlimactic. After a methodical and well done journey to gaining their powers, as well as the trust of each other as a team, seeing the Rangers in action feels a little underwhelming--almost as if the filmmakers really didn‘t have their hearts sets on making a Power Rangers movie.

Another problem I had was the blatant advertising in the film, particularly for a donut shop franchise--which is pretty outrageous, considering all of the various PR series were basically nothing more than ads for the PR toys. Despite the careful setting up for a sequel at the end, there won’t be one, thanks to the poor performance at the box office. I have no doubt PR will get rebooted again soon, hopefully with no on-screen advertising. --SF

Comments

Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice -- a review

Despite coming out thirty six years after the first film, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice , once again directed by Tim Burton, wound up being vastly entertaining, adding lots of pleasant surprises, like the use of stop-motion animation. The sequel takes place within the same real-life time frame, with Lydia Deetz, played with wry humor by Winona Ryder, now the host of a ghost hunting show. She’s also the mother of Astrid, a teenager played by Jenna Ortega. They live with Delia Deetz (the always great Catherine O'Hara), Lydia’s step-mother and Astrid’s step-grandmother. After the death of Charles--Delia’s husband and Lydia’s father--during a bird-watching accident involving sharks, the Deetz ladies must go back up to the creepy house in Winter River, Connecticut for his funeral. This is the same place where Lydia first encountered Beetlejuice all those years ago, and she is understandably reluctant to even mention his name, lest she accidentally calls forth Beet...

Explorer From Another World

It’s Friday night during the summer in Beutter county, an idyllic farming community in Indiana, and the good folks are settling in for what should be another humdinger of an evening. Until their plans are shattered by the arrival of an Explorer From Another World! This turns out to be an alien (Gemma Sterling) who starts savagely killing people from the moment it disembarks from its flying saucer. Local kids Eddie (Colin McCorquodale), Marybeth (Sage Marchand) and Culpepper (Nolan Gay) are planning on seeing a movie, but it looks like they’ll be battling for the very survival of the human race instead! Explorer From Another World is a wonderfully done throwback to the B-movies of the 1950s and 1960s. Ably directed by Woody Edwards (who gives himself a small cameo as Hank in the sheriff’s jail cell), the film is forty five minutes long, but manages to tell its torrid but funny story very effectively in the time allotted. And the short running time tracks when you...

Jack Reacher Never Go Back -- a Review

I was first introduced to Jack Reacher through the Tom Cruise movie of the same name that was released back in 2012. I liked the movie well enough, despite a few nitpicks here and there--but I really enjoyed reading the novels by Lee Child. Jack Reacher was a former US Army officer who retires and becomes a drifter, roaming from state to state in the country that he fought so hard to protect. And Reacher is still protecting us, taking on a variety of villains, from backwoods mobsters to big-city terrorists from book to book. The stories in the books are well-told, with great attention paid to the smallest of details. I think of them as 1980s action films, only without being insulting to your intelligence. What a perfect series to adapt to movies, right? Well, Tom Cruise looks nothing like how Jack Reacher is described in the books. And while I thought the first Jack Reacher film was good, the second, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back , is very badly flawed. Based on the JR novel of the sa...

The View From The Mountain

Search This Blog