Review: Power Rangers

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            An afternoon children’s institution for almost a quarter century, the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers have returned to the big screen after two decades and they are wiping the slate clean.  Five teenagers in Angel Grove become defenders of the universe against the evil Rita Repulsa under the guidance of Zordon, a former Ranger stuck inside the Grid of the home ship.  As cheesy & goofy the show was back in the day, this new iteration tries to combine some the fun of the original show with a few more gritty elements of the modern world.  But Power Rangers is nothing more than Millennial Nostalgia Syndrome run amok.

            Dean Israelite (Project Almanac) directs this like it’s his entry in the “So You Wanna Direct Transformers?” contest.  Every shot is either an extreme close-up or a wide shot with a Dutch angle.  You could count with one hand the number of times the camera stood still for a majority of the shot.  The camera spun so fast in a travelling car in the opening that I needed to close my eyes to keep from getting motion sickness.  The final battle features too many shots of CGI creatures on the side of the frame.  It always fascinates me when $105 million was spent on a movie and the filmmakers don’t want to show what they spent it on.  Israelite & cinematographer Matthew J Lloyd (Netflix’s Daredevil) create an atmosphere that keeps Power Rangers from being coherent.  Too much of the film, especially early on, is shot at night & is poorly lit, making much of the movie (literally) unwatchable.

            The design of all the supposedly-iconic costumes & vehicles is hideous.  Everything has the same basic color scheme: dark gray on black.  The ship looks like if a 1950s alien designed the Batcave.  It’s worst feature is Zordon himself, who looks like a giant Pin Art 3D attached to the wall like a flat screen television.  That sounds cool but he’s filmed with camera up his nose and your focus is on the individual pin closest to the camera & not the whole face.  The suits & the Zords share the same fatal flaw: the primary color of the Ranger character is not of the primary color of their costume.  In the scene where the Rangers do their clichéd, slo-mo, introductory walk towards the camera in the ship, you cannot tell which Ranger is which.  The same thing happens when the Rangers or their mechanical creatures fly across the screen in the fight scene.  The reason is that the majority of each suit is dark grey instead of the primary color of each Ranger.  In addition, each Ranger’s primary color appears to be faded or mixed with black.  If you're colorblind, you're f*cked.  Combine that with the poorly designed henchmen called Puddies, the hand-to-hand fight is a mammoth mess with the light gray fighting dark gray on black rock.

            As for the teenage Rangers, we have Jason Scott (Montgomery), the disgraced star quarterback, Kimberly Hart (Scott), a pariah cheerleader, Billy Cranston (Cyler) an African-American genius on the autism spectrum and Zack (Lin) & Trini (Becky G), two social & ethnical outsiders.  Within five seconds of meeting Kim & Billy, we fall for them as interesting characters thanks to the actors.  Naomi Scott has the kind of face the camera loves and she has the chops to love it back.  If there is anyone of the main five who will breakout, it’s RJ Cyler who plays Billy with the perfect blend of intelligence & awkwardness that adds the slightest bit of reality to the proceedings.  Dacre Montgomery is given the meaty, lead role that has the complexity to him but the young actor lacks the portfolio of facial expressions to convey the necessary emotions.  This actor was obviously cast not because of his talent but for his resemblance to Zac Efron.

            By the time we get a chance to know the final two Power Rangers, the movie has already ran about 40 minutes so they, a young Asian man & a young Latina, are kept in the background.  We do learn that Zack comes from a broken home & has a sick mother and is somewhat developed.  As far as Trini goes, we know she’s an outcast at school & home because she may or may not be a lesbian and…that’s about it.  We don’t even know her name until the 50 minute mark.  Ludi Lin is fine as Zack but Becky G should stick to her day job as a singer.  Every line she says is rushed & in one bland tone as if she wants to get away from the camera as quickly as possible.

            But the bad characters don’t end there.  Rita Repulsa takes way too long developing into her & her creature’s final form that there’s nothing we discover about her outside of her desire to get revenge & take over the world.  Elizabeth Banks is usually very reliable but Meryl Streep circa 1984 couldn’t make Rita work.  Zordon should have been a mystical teacher for the team but, to be brutally honest, he’s an asshole.  Zordon hates the idea of being the spirit in the wall so he devises a plan to come back as one of the Rangers.  And he almost gets away with it but has a moment of unearned humility & accepts his destiny.

            There is also an element of the third act that belongs in the Product Placement Hall of Shame next to the McDonald’s scene in Mac & Me.  Never in the history of cinema or mankind has the location of a Krispy Kreme been so integral to human existence.  It’s moments like that that destroy anything the script that screenwriter John Gatins (Real Steel, Kong: Skull Island) was trying to accomplish in between the callbacks to the TV series.  It’s an aggressively silly moment that makes it appear that the whole movie wants to be a joke but with all the teen angst thrown about in the first two acts, the tone is out of control.

            Power Rangers is Michael Bay-lite, which is still too much of a bad thing.  It’s a movie that is too loud, too frenetic, too confused, too effects-heavy and too nostalgia-focused to be anything worth your attention.  Sure, there are three heroes that are engaging enough but their two ethnic minority counterparts are left in the background and a villain on another planet.  Power Rangers is nothing more than a giant Krispy Kreme doughnut: filling & full of sugar enough for a small burst of energy but full of regret in retrospect.

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