Hey everyone! Happy Friday! I'm back with another review! The next several posts that I'm putting out today are ones that I'm porting over from Josh's Movie Review Corner so bear with me as I get everything moved over. The first post is the only standalone movie review I have on that blog, which I did before I started doing the TV and Movie Wrap-Up series, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie. So let's get into it.
I've been a fan of the Power Rangers franchise for almost 28 years. I first discovered Mighty Morphin Power Rangers in early 1994, near the end of the show's first season. The earlier episodes were on in reruns constantly, so I never actually missed an episode, but late first season is when I started watching the show. So when 20th Century Fox and Saban Entertainment announced that the Power Rangers were coming to the big screen in mid 1995 I was stoked.
I didn't get to see Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie in theatres, but I remember seeing the trailers for it on TV during the first half of 1995, and I remember seeing the toys in the various catalogues we used to get, but seeing it on the big screen was not in the cards. I did see it on home video though. I had it on VHS and I really enjoyed it.
Even though it's not a good movie, I can't help but love it. Not even because I'm a Power Rangers fan or because it's nostalgic. I like it because it's a fun movie with cheesy special effects. And by cheesy effects I mean really horrible CGI, and practical effects that are only slightly better than what I saw on the TV show around that same time. And yet, it works.
One of the most memorable elements of this movie is Paul Freeman as Ivan Ooze. I mean he took out the Rangers and Zordon, AND Rita and Zedd in one fell swoop. I'm pretty sure I didn't see Raiders of the Lost Ark until after Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie so I didn't recognize Ivan Ooze as Indy's nemesis Belloq. Nor did I recognize Belloq as Ivan Ooze when I saw Raiders five or six years later. The thing about Ivan Ooze is that he's a cheesy, over the top, comic book villain, which Power Rangers is full of, but he's funny which is why I like him. If he weren't funny he'd be no better than Rito Revolto or any other villain who temporarily succeeded against the Rangers, only to be defeated by them once they got new powers and new Zords.
I love the soundtrack for this movie. While I don't have the full score album, I do have the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers The Movie: Original Soundtrack Album which contains songs like "Higher Ground" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Dreams" by Van Halen, and "SenSurround" by They Might Be Giants. My favourite songs on the album though are "Trouble" by Shampoo and "Ayeyaiyai (Alpha Song)" by Power Jet. "Trouble" plays at the beginning of the scene where Fred Kelman (played by Jamie Croft) tries to convince Bulk, Skull, and the other kids that Ivan Ooze is evil and he's going to kill their parents and plays during the closing credits after the mid-credits scene where Rita and Zedd return to the Moon Palace following Ivan's destruction. "Ayeyaiyai (Alpha Song)" is the final song played during the closing credits, and it's basically a song about Alpha's role within the Power Rangers.
Critics at the time said that the movie was just a longer episode of the TV show, and I can't actually agree with that. TV shows are very different from movies and are paced differently too. On a show like Power Rangers, you only have 20 to 30 minutes to tell each part of a multi-part episode, whereas with movies you're telling the story all at once mostly without the need for cliffhangers and the occasional time jump after the initial resolution of the cliffhanger at the beginning of each part. Which is why it's a bit jarring to watch movies that are just edited together versions of multi-part episodes of a TV show. They often don't edit out the cliffhangers.
My favourite sequence in this entire movie is the morphing sequence. I always get chills when I hear the usual "Dragonzord/Tigerzord!", "Mastodon!", "Pterodactyl!", "Triceratops!", "Saber-toothed Tiger!", "Tyrannosaurus!" morphing call on the TV show because it's basically their call to action. But it's an 8 sec sequence, because you only have half an hour to tell a story in the TV show. The movie version however is 32 seconds long. Which doesn't seem like that much of a difference. However, because the Rangers took so long to morph, Ivan Ooze's henchmen walked away. I always thought that was funny, because in shows like Power Rangers, Sailor Moon, and Digimon the bad guys always just stand there and wait while the heroes transform. Not in this movie though. They walked away even though they had the Rangers cornered.
One thing that puzzles me about the movie is that despite not having their powers while on Phaedos, the Rangers were still able to do things that they couldn't do before they had powers. I figured that Dulcea gave them limited power when she gave them their Ninja Ranger suits, which is how they were able to defeat the Stone Warriors guarding the monolith. But when they first arrived, they're struggling with the Tengu Warriors sent by Ivan to destroy the Rangers and one point a Tengu picks up Kimberly and lifts her into the air. After a bit, it drops her from a pretty decent height, but she lands on her feet without any broken bones or physical harm, like she'd have done if she'd had her Ranger powers. Yet in the next movie, Katherine and Tommy jump off a waterfall and Katherine twists her ankle, and her Ranger powers were intact...What?
Speaking of Kimberly and Aisha, I love both characters and both Amy Jo Johnson and Karan Ashley did such a wonderful job on the show and in this movie. However, they are the most useless Rangers in this entire movie. On the show Kimberly and Aisha are pretty strong characters, and very rarely get into the kind of trouble that they need the boys to help them get out of. There's only three examples I can give off the top of my head for Kimberly. The first was in "Calamity Kimberly" where she was trapped in another dimension and the other Rangers had to save her. The second was in the second season episode "Forever Friends" where she's kidnapped by Goldar, along with Aisha's friend Shawna, and can't morph because Shawna is there and Kim has to keep her identity as the Pink Ranger a secret. The third example of this was in season 3 in the three part episode, "Changing of the Zords" and that was because she was weakened from the loss of her powers, was unconscious when Goldar captured her and was kept in stasis by Lord Zedd basically the whole time. But in most instances where Kimberly is captured or in trouble, she's pretty good at getting herself out of it. Aisha is no slouch either on the TV show. In fact, the only time she'd really been captured was in the season 2 two parter "The Ninja Encounter" and that was BEFORE she was the Yellow Ranger and had no Ranger powers. Not to mention the amount of screaming both girls do in this movie is annoying. I get that the writer and director were new to Power Rangers when they made this movie, but they basically reduced the only two female leads to screaming, helpless, '90s movie female characters, when that's not who either of them are at all.
Overall while Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie is far from the best superhero movie ever made, even by '90s standards, it's still a fun movie to watch. It's your average quest movie, similar to The Wizard of Oz, The Empire Strikes Back, and more recent films like Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle where the heroes have to gain new abilities and end up discovering things about themselves before defeating the bad guys by the end of the movie. Having said that though, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie is definitely not a movie you'd put on for date night. It's not that it's a guilty pleasure movie by any means. But this movie is so very rooted in the '90s that unless your partner grew up in the '90s, or is a fan of the franchise, they're not going to appreciate it as much. Though I'd definitely recommend putting the soundtrack on because, like I said, it's got some great songs on it.
Alrighty, that's going to be it for me for the time being. I will be back for my next imported movie review, where I'm going to bring over Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn. See you in a bit.
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