The film is your traditional origin story in which 5 high school kids (portrayed by actors with the average age of 25) discover some ancient colorful stones in a gold mine and unlock a long-lost power. That power, which belonged to an ancient alien race, has been locked deep in the earth for 65 million years. An ancient race called "Power Ranger" (I guess) worked to protect the earth from an evil force named Rita Repulsa (Elizabeth Banks, more on her later). A meteor strikes, the dinosaurs die, and both the goodies and baddies are buried for a looooong time.
It's present day in some sleepy mountain town that looks like it has no more than 1,000 people living there, and yet the high school is a blend of the most diverse and attractive people you have ever seen, a perfect melding of the cliche and political correct. There's Jason who is the football player-turned-rebel, Kimberly the hot one, Billy the autistic one who also doubles as comic relief, Trini the subtly gay one, and Zach the reckless Asian one. All that's missing is Farhad the Iranian immigrant and Steve the Australian (maybe he could be the valedictorian).
The group forms an unlikely friendship that is simultaneously forced and uncomfortably artificial. Fate leads them all to this gold mine where they discover an ancient Alien shape ship complete with a wise-cracking robot named Alpha-5 (Bill Hader) who, despite being underground since the Jurassic period, has a comprehensive understanding of the American-English language (a language he describes as "primitive.") Alpha-5 communicates with Zordon (Bryan Cranston), an ancient alien now locked in the ship's hard drive. He teaches the Rangers how to fight. He also reminds us that Bryan Cranston is a better actor than this.
The movie is a bizarre, choppy blend of camp and drama, and at times it's anyone's guess which one the filmmakers were going for. Rita Repulsa, our villain, is part Gloria Swanson from "Sunset Blvd" and the booing wench from "The Princess Bride." It's a bafflingly bad performance that presents no clear threat and provides Elizabeth Banks with more than enough scenes of laughing to herself (as maniacs do) and eating Krispee Kreme donuts and gold by the pound. Also, how funny is it that a 65 million year old alien would be named Rita, one of the 100 most popular girl names in the 1990's?
As for the Power Rangers, I am not exaggerating when I say that out of the entire 2-hour run time, we see the 5 kids in their actual armor for the final 20 minutes of the movie. Yes there are a handful of fight scenes where the gang trains in a cave, but the actual sighting of the Red, Yellow, Blue, Black, and Pink Rangers is tacked on merely as an afterthought. Why is this film 2 hours long anyways? The final fight scene plays more like a scene out of a Transformers movie, and I am shocked to say that perhaps the Michael Bay films would be more fun to watch if forced at gunpoint between the two. At least there's more action.
I can see this becoming a film that is mocked in years to come for being so laughably bad. It's hard to imagine the adolescent audience that grew up with the TV show being satisfied by such a poor screen adaptation. I have to believe audiences are smarter than that. The script feels like the writers threw darts at random words to form sentences and plot, and the editor accidentally dropped the film into a paper shredder. There isn't an ounce of logic to it, nor was there a want to understand. If you're a fan of the original series, don't tarnish such innocent memories. Stay away from this flick.
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