By Matt Fleming and Jarrod Jones. This is the ANTI-MONITOR podcast, where you obviously don’t know who you’re dealing with, Mr. Raisin Head. This week, Jarrod & Birdy assess an odious full-length adventure featuring television’s Power Rangers, ‘Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie’. A fond trip down memory lane this decidedly is not, people.
As always, be wary for spoilers throughout, and please enjoy.
ANTI-MONITOR — MATT: The 1990s, like any decade, was a time for odd phenomena. (Rollerblading and neon burst to mind.) Few fads define the era quite like the popularity of the American hodgepodge that was the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers TV show, and like any hot property there’s always the temptation to make the great Hollywood leap.
While the show was cobbled together from existing Japanese footage and new scenes of American “teens” being cool, upright role models, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie was 100% original content that somehow seemed completely out of joint from its source material. What was ostensibly an extra-long episode of the butt-kicking TV show wound up being a slogging bore that more closely resembled parody than tribute. Throw in a wasted budget squandered by bargain-basement CGI, a subplot that vilifies parents (the people who were actually forced to watch this mess), and a trip to a planet that conspicuously looked like the Australian coast, and the result is an unwatchable disasterpiece that survives only because of nostalgia.
The opening skydiving scene, set to a Red Hot Chili Peppers cover of “Higher Ground” is as exciting as the film gets. That’s saying something for a franchise that has long thrived by entertaining kids.
ANTI-MONITOR — JARROD: There’s no love lost between me and the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. I have vague recollections of watching the earlier seasons after school with my younger brothers, most of which swirl around a fondness for the series’ resident superhero, Jason David Frank.
Frank made the leap to the big screen, along with about 30% of the show’s cast, to Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie. That film certainly didn’t do him any favors, but Frank’s White Ranger lent the film a modicum of earnestness to what was overall just a product to be sold. The one other performance worth a mention is Paul Freeman, who mugs it up as the movie’s marquee heavy, Ivan Ooze. Beyond that, MMPR: TM does nothing to further the legend of the Power Rangers, has little to no respect for its target audience, and shows nothing but contempt for anyone who isn’t already an unapologetic super-fan of the property.
CONSENSUS: Bland even by the property’s own vanilla standards, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie is a Nineties relic that’s best left forgotten. 2 out of 10
Before: ‘The Wolverine’: As good as these X-movies get (for now)
The Anti-Monitor podcast is co-written and produced by M. Fleming and J. Jones, edited by J. Jones.
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