I love Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: The Movie, some good clean fun, but this movie is just embarrassing, and nowhere near as fun.
The plot centres around an extraterrestrial wizard named Lerigot, who goes to Earth in order to avoid capture by a crazed alien queen, Divatox (no, seriously). She plans to use Lerigot to open up a portal so that she can marry an evil dark creature, Maligore, and unite their powers. Naturally, the Power Rangers must stop this.
Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie is nowhere near as much fun or cool to watch as the first movie. Most notably, Aisha and Billy are completely missing, with no explanation, and Kimberly is no longer a Power Ranger either for some reason, even though she has an important part in the film, thankfully, along with old regular Jason. Rocky is technically there, but he suffers an injury at the start of the film, as if trying to get him out of it, which is sad. Then we have a new blue ranger, Justin, who really is much too young to be a Ranger.
A more serious problem is the Zords. The whole mythology around the Power Rangers is much lamer here. The Zords are no longer kinds of animals, they are now all cars, called "Turbo" powers, which just feels nowhere near as imaginative. At a pivotal point of the film, the car Zords merge into what I find hard to describe as anything but a Transformers rip-off. Even worse than that, though, is the fact that the Power Rangers, in Power Ranger form, have so little screen time.
Furthermore, the plot is terribly paced, and not very fun to follow. The Rangers have to travel to another dimension via an old pirate ship. Seriously? In the first half hour, a lot of time is wasted with the Rangers trying to find Lerigot, and some insufferable scenes of him wandering around the jungle. Nothing hangs together at all. Remember how central the very concept of being a Power Ranger was to the first movie? Here, it feels like little more than a gimmick.
Lerigot is a body-sized puppet who looks like an extra from The Dark Crystal. With his wide doe eyes and nonsensical slurring, he gets on your nerves very quickly, and he just does not stop. The rest of the supporting cast is just as bad. Divatox's henchmen are just laughably embarrassing, especially the insufferable Elgar. Remember Goldar, and Mordant? Those were entertaining henchmen. Maligore, for a supposed unstoppable force of evil, is incredibly ungainly and ineffective. Divatox herself is amusing and Hilary Shephard Turner clearly has a lot of fun with the role, but her overacting gets a little over the top. All the puns are so self-conscious as if the writer were self-aware how bad it would turn out. The special effects are much poorer than in the first movie, too, especially Zordon (he barely looks like he's talking) and Maligore's crater (amateur bluescreen mistake there). Thank goodness Alpha is as good as ever.
The best part of the movie is an amusing cameo from Rita and Lord Zedd. That's about a minute in length, and it made the movie for me. Too bad that the rest isn't as fun to watch. Not even having Kimberly and Jason there can help, really. There's none of the spirit of adventure from the first movie. Do yourself a favour and pass this one up, you're not really missing anything. Watch Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers instead.
The plot centres around an extraterrestrial wizard named Lerigot, who goes to Earth in order to avoid capture by a crazed alien queen, Divatox (no, seriously). She plans to use Lerigot to open up a portal so that she can marry an evil dark creature, Maligore, and unite their powers. Naturally, the Power Rangers must stop this.
Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie is nowhere near as much fun or cool to watch as the first movie. Most notably, Aisha and Billy are completely missing, with no explanation, and Kimberly is no longer a Power Ranger either for some reason, even though she has an important part in the film, thankfully, along with old regular Jason. Rocky is technically there, but he suffers an injury at the start of the film, as if trying to get him out of it, which is sad. Then we have a new blue ranger, Justin, who really is much too young to be a Ranger.
A more serious problem is the Zords. The whole mythology around the Power Rangers is much lamer here. The Zords are no longer kinds of animals, they are now all cars, called "Turbo" powers, which just feels nowhere near as imaginative. At a pivotal point of the film, the car Zords merge into what I find hard to describe as anything but a Transformers rip-off. Even worse than that, though, is the fact that the Power Rangers, in Power Ranger form, have so little screen time.
Furthermore, the plot is terribly paced, and not very fun to follow. The Rangers have to travel to another dimension via an old pirate ship. Seriously? In the first half hour, a lot of time is wasted with the Rangers trying to find Lerigot, and some insufferable scenes of him wandering around the jungle. Nothing hangs together at all. Remember how central the very concept of being a Power Ranger was to the first movie? Here, it feels like little more than a gimmick.
Lerigot is a body-sized puppet who looks like an extra from The Dark Crystal. With his wide doe eyes and nonsensical slurring, he gets on your nerves very quickly, and he just does not stop. The rest of the supporting cast is just as bad. Divatox's henchmen are just laughably embarrassing, especially the insufferable Elgar. Remember Goldar, and Mordant? Those were entertaining henchmen. Maligore, for a supposed unstoppable force of evil, is incredibly ungainly and ineffective. Divatox herself is amusing and Hilary Shephard Turner clearly has a lot of fun with the role, but her overacting gets a little over the top. All the puns are so self-conscious as if the writer were self-aware how bad it would turn out. The special effects are much poorer than in the first movie, too, especially Zordon (he barely looks like he's talking) and Maligore's crater (amateur bluescreen mistake there). Thank goodness Alpha is as good as ever.
The best part of the movie is an amusing cameo from Rita and Lord Zedd. That's about a minute in length, and it made the movie for me. Too bad that the rest isn't as fun to watch. Not even having Kimberly and Jason there can help, really. There's none of the spirit of adventure from the first movie. Do yourself a favour and pass this one up, you're not really missing anything. Watch Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers instead.