Power Rangers (2017)

RATING: C

Well, it was only a matter of time wasn't it? Everything else has been getting rebooted for the big screen during the past several years. Especially stuff that was once a toy/TV show/older movie for the younger ones. Transformers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, G.I. Joe, even LEGO's. At some point the Power Rangers were going to have to come up, right? 

I can't say I know a lot about the Power Rangers. Coming into this movie, I knew a few names of characters and foes and other stuff/things (Voltron, etc). Oh yeah, and... "It's Morphin' time." But I'd barely watched anything of theirs before, and from what I did know, it sounded pretty corny and the trailers for this new movie only looked so-so at best. So I approached the movie with quite low expectations. And surprisingly... it's actually kind of okay? 

I'll just go ahead and throw this reveal right out of the gate for all the actual Power Rangers fans: there is no "Morphin'" until about 90 minutes in. And this movie's right at about two hours. That might seem pretty hard to imagine--after all, how are you going to spend the rest of the time in a Power Rangers movie? I mean sure, we get to spend a fair amount of time with Zordon and with them training and such (minus the armor). 

Turns out that they decided to mix a Power Rangers movie... with a coming-of-age high school teen drama of sorts? I guess that's less surprising in hindsight. The Power Rangers are generally teenagers, after all. And this is a 2010's movie featuring teenagers, so given the fact that it's an origin story, they probably actually didn't have a lot of other options (besides letting them start Morphin' way earlier in the movie, of course). 

Oddly enough, it actually kind of works. Once one get pasts all the ridiculous cliches in the first 20 minutes or so and we start spending time with *just* the five teenagers, it actually works out fairly well. There's actually some good character development, and by the time the climactic battle rolls around you actually care about the characters--something I would never have expected this movie to pull off. It actually helps make the big action finale more enjoyable once it rolls around.

But it's still a pretty doggone flawed movie. Our antagonist Rita Repulsa, despite being portrayed by Elizabeth Banks (for some reason), spends most of the time muttering about gold and screaming incomprehensible things. Banks seriously hams it up here, and it unfortunately doesn't work. Bryan Cranston is also in this movie for some reason as Zordon... and he actually really isn't given much to do. 

While they do thankfully limit the corniness, there are still a couple of rather silly moments. This movie does just so happen to include the most over-the-top product placement of all time. While the dumber high school cliches are toned down after the early parts of the movie, they are still pretty dumb. Finally, the climactic act would've been pretty lame if we hadn't actually grown to like the characters--because it's basically just a few generic fights against some CGI rock monsters before it suddenly turns into Pacific Rim... for all of two minutes. 

This movie is actually a lot better than it has any right to be. Given the fact that there's no actual Power Rangers for 90 minutes, our antagonist is rather lame, and the climactic battle feels toned down compared to some of its counterparts in its genre, this movie should've fallen flat on its face. But it's actually kind of decent. It doesn't suck. It's not great or even really good. But I was expecting to finish the movie and wonder why I decided to watch it. That didn't happen. I don't regret seeing this movie. That in of itself is impressive.