Review of 'Power Rangers'

Jason Scott (Dacre Montgomery) is under house arrest after a school prank goes wrong. In detention Jason defends geek Billy Cranston (RJ Cyler) from a bully. Billy offers to remove the police monitor on Jason's ankle and allow him to borrow his mother's van if Jason agrees to help him. Later that evening Jason and Billy move some equipment to a nearby quarry. At the quarry Jason meets up with another school misfit, Kimberly Hart (Naomi Scott) who is upset for having been removed from the cheerleading squad. Along with Zack Taylor (Ludi Lin) and new girl Trini (Becky G) the four witness Billy set off some explosives that reveal five power coins: Red, blue, black, yellow, and pink. They each pick one up and quickly find the coins have granted them super-human powers. Exploring these new abilities the five come across an advanced spaceship manned by a small robot Alpha-5 (Bill Hader) who has been waiting for them. Zordon (Bryan Cranston), is a former Red Ranger whose consciousness now inhabits the ship's computer explains that Rita Repulsa (Elizabeth Banks), a former Green Ranger, is determined to use the Zeo Crystal to rule the Universe and that it up to the five of them to stop her. Initially reluctant, the misfits are initially unable to “morph” into the ranger armour so are forced to train without it and suffer greatly. They will need to find a way to work together to stop Rita's evil plans.

The effects on this new reboot of the Power Rangers franchise are quite cheesy (though thankfully, better than the original television series) and while there is some depth to the individual stories of the youth the story itself has all the depth of tissue paper and is confusing as all get out with little in the way of any sort of coherent explanation of what is going on despite a flashback sequence at the beginning of the film. Followers of the Power Rangers story will likely have no such problems but for the 99.99% of the rest of us we are sort of stuck. Additionally, none of the characters are particularly engaging and even Zordon and the robot on the spacesuit are not to be completely trusted making us wonder whether we should care for anyone here. As you might expect the ending is somewhat predictable making this a “by the numbers” blockbuster.

Rating: “A slight glimmer of hope, but mostly awful”

Review Date: 2017-09-11

Directed by: Dean Israelite

Studio: Lionsgate

Year: 2017

Length: 124 minutes

Genre: Science Fiction

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3717490/