As a kid, I remember loving the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. The action was fun and seemed like it belonged in an animated cartoon. The characters also seemed to reflect the cartoon aspect, but they were your typical 90’s cartoon stereotypes. You watched it for the stupid costumes, the stupid effects and the fact they have robot-dinosaur vehicles. Oddly enough, all that made me love the series as a kid, all that — that’s what I hated most about this movie.
A misfit group of teenagers chucked together in what seems like the breakfast club: this is how we meet three of five of our heroes. To be Red Ranger, Jason (Dacre Montgomery), star football player and local town star recently decided to try and steal his team’s mascot cow — why? I dunno. Probably because his caricature is to be the popular kid who hates it. Kimberly — Pink Ranger — (Naomi Scott) goes through a similar huge jump to get to her caricature when she decides to cut her hair short and walk slow-motion back into the classroom with a flick of ‘that’ll show em!’ Billy — Blue Ranger — (R J Cyler) clings onto Jason very fast after Jason helps protect the nerdy weird kid from the bully of the class who, of course, so happens to be a ginger (I’ll start a hashtag to stop typecasting gingers as bullies soon Hollywood.)
Under a perfect condition, the three manage to bump into Zack, the to-be Black Ranger (Ludi Lin), and Trini (Becky G), the to-be Yellow Ranger, at the local mines where Billy, because he can, causes a decent sized explosion looking for treasures. The five find their coins to give them the power to morph and go! go! power rangers! Well… not quite there yet.
After getting into a car accident that would normally kill someone, they each wake up now stronger than any normal human being should be. The movie never really explains what happens here — if they respawned like a videogame character or what? Nevertheless, this is where Power Rangers is at its best, when the yet formed team, or simply a group of teenagers, are learning to get along.
The cast is great together and they sell the bad script. The chemistry between the five is what makes the movie fun and enjoyable and the scenes of them learning about one another, seeking answers, and eventually training together are where the movie is at its most enjoyable.
When, eventually, Elizabeth Banks is introduced as Rita Repulsa you may question why we needed her? She serves as the reason the team begins training under Zordon (Bryan Cranston) who is a living-wall with the mind of a previous Red Ranger that died to stop Rita. But did THIS movie need Rita? No. You already have a cast of characters that are dealing with their own problems and the plotline of them simply learning to be a team, or get along, is enough. But superhero film basic school says — you need a boss at the end.
It doesn’t help that Rita is a boring villain. She wants to destroy the world for some reason and she has an army of golem dudes and then she can make a giant gold dude. Great. Elizabeth Banks is also having a little too much fun with her performance. She’s outpacing the rest of the cast into the cheese factory, but this movie is trying to take Power Rangers seriously and her performance isn’t helping.
In the last quarter, it’s battle time: introduce the robot-dino things I loved as a kid; have the Power Rangers finally go kick some ass. It could have been great, but it’s like watching a CW budget fight with terrible editing and zero thought put into how the action would be shot. It’s a drag.
Power Rangers gets its cast right and thanks to them it can be fun to watch. But its unwillingness to commit to a more serious story or commit to its roots keeps it from being anything special.
Rating: 5.5/10
