Subject: REVIEW: TURBO: A POWER RANGERS MOVIE (1997)

From: [email-masked] (Dairenn Lombard)
Date: 15 Apr 1997 18:04:53 GMT

TURBO: A POWER RANGERS MOVIE
                       A film review by Darienn Lombard
                        Copyright 1997 Darienn Lombard

A Twentieth Century Fox-Film Corporation Release
Produced by Saban Entertainment in association with Toei Company, LTD.

Length: 99 min.
MMPA Rating (USA): PG (for action scenes).

Contents:

 I. Preface

  a. Disclaimer
  b. The Story
  c. Background on the Production

 II. Story Critique

  a. Plot Review
  b. Script Quality
  c. Characterization
  d. Direction

 III. Presentation

  a. Audio
  b. Video

 IV. Movie Review

  a. Good Qualities
  b. Bad Qualities
  c. Ending Grade

 I. Preface

  a. Disclaimer

The below text contains detailed information regarding the content of the above
listed motion picture.  If you have not viewed this film yet and do not wish to
be told the plot ahead of time, do not continue reading. This post is for those
interested in whether or not they should spend the money and time watching this
movie.  Do not write angry E-Mail to me regarding this review.  This is America
and  I  am entitled to make available my opinion on subject matter available to
the public.  Thank you for your time.

  b. The Story

In order to prevent the closing of an orphanage Justin (Blake Foster) lives at,
Tommy Oliver (Jason David Frank), Rocky (Steven Cardenas) and Adam Park (Johnny
Yong Bosch) participate in a martial arts tournament to raise money to save it.
However, during training, Rocky injures himself endangering the fate of the
tournament.  Justin learns of the identities of the Power Rangers while paying
Rocky a visit in the hospital.

Meanwhile, Lerigot possesses powers to allow intergalactic pirates led by the
dominatrix-type villainess Divatox (Hillary Shepard) to pass through the
Nemesis Triangle.  Beyond this interdimentional gateway lies the lost island
Muranthias where her object of matrimony exists, a hideous beast named Maligore
resides.  Once married, Divatox figures she will have possession of all the
universe's riches through exploiting his unmatched might.

Upon Lerigot's escape to Earth, the wizard is taken under the wing of Alpha V
(voiced by Richard Wood), the automaton guardian of the Power Chamber where
Zordon (voiced by Bob Manahan) resides.  However, Lerigot has a wife: Tera and
a son.  Divatox threatens their safety if Lerigot does not serve them; Lerigot
prepares to surrender.  The Power Rangers refuse to turn the wizard over to
Divatox until they learn that Jason Lee Scott (Austin St. John) and Kimberly
Hart (Amy Jo Johnson), the former Red/Gold Ranger and Pink Ranger have been
captured by Divatox.  Her interest in them is only to present a sacrifice to
Maligore.

After Divatox tricks the Power Rangers in to believing they turned over Jason
and Kimberly, they formulate a plan.  Chase Divatox and her fellow pirates to
Muranthias to rescue Lerigot and his family, Jason and Kimberly and stop
Maligore using their new Turbo Power Morphers.  Since Rocky is still in
recovery, Justin is called to become Blue Ranger.

A VERY LONG voyage on an enchanted ship leads the Power Rangers with their new
Turbo Vehicles to the lost island of Muranthias which does not end without
consequences.  Divatox's submarine fires torpedoes at the Power Rangers' ship
blowing it up entirely bringing Adam to the bring of believing his friends have
died.  However, the rangers successfully escape in their Turbo vehicles.  Upon
reaching the island, the rangers use their keys to activate their Turbo Power
Morphers as follows:

   Tommy: Red Ranger, driver of Red Lightning Turbo Zord
    Adam: Green Ranger, driver of Desert Thunder Turbo Zord
  Justin: Blue Ranger, driver of the Mountain Climber Turbo Zord
   Tanya: Yellow Ranger, driver of the Dune Star Turbo Zord
     Kat: Pink Ranger, driver of the Wind Chaser Turbo Zord

Together, they will form the Turbo Mega Zord, the most powerful Megazord yet to
fight the self-enlarged Maligore to the death.

  c. Background on the Production

It is amazing that Saban was able to find the investors to provide the budget
for this film.  In its first week, Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie made over $3
million at over 2,110 auditoriums, so they didn't make any money.  At least,
not directly from the film (or its soundtrack).  However, they probably have
sold a great deal of toys.

Rumor in late 1995 was that there would be a second Power Rangers film,
however, it would be filmed in Mexico.  Fortunately, they didn't go to such
extravagant means to shoot this film.  They did film in Hawai'i but most of the
production took place in Woodland Hills (outdoor scenes) and sets were built at
Saban Studios in Valencia, California; Stage 3.

Mercury Records was behind the soundtrack on this motion picture which would
explain why more than one song produced by Ron Wasserman made it onto the
soundtrack, however, they still fought hard to eliminate rock music from the
score.  Of course, they could not entirely eliminate it considering that it is
apart of the Power Rangers motif.  Shuki Levy, known for scoring early 80s DIC
produced animated series', had never scored any music for Power Rangers until
this movie.  And fortunately he did not fail us.

 II. Story Critique

  a. Plot Review

One must admire Shuki Levy and Shell Danielson, the writers for this motion
picture, in their attempt to raise the level of intelligence required to watch
this movie beyond none at all.  However, it is too little too late.  I say this
because, in the case where Justin discovers the identity of the Power Rangers,
Rocky is in the hospital from over-extending himself and his friends visit him.
They're called by Zordon via their wrist communicators and teleport away.
Meanwhile, Justin is hiding under Rocky's bed listening the whole while.

Even though that was a clever thing to write, it isn't so clever when you
compare it against the past near 200 episodes of Power Rangers where they have
morphed in public, stood around without their helmets in public, communicated
and teleported in public, and so on.  By the definition of these
"low-intelligence" episodes, that should have never happened.

Meanwhile, we've got the same old, over-the-top, unrealistic character playing
lead villain (or villainess in this case).  The only thing that sets this movie
apart from previous episodes of Power Rangers is that the villains are actually
pretty gruesome looking.  However, Divatox and her right-hand-man are the worse
they have ever done.  Lord Zedd was better.  She spends the whole episode
jiggling her over-exaggerated bosoms while ranting and over-acting.  Whenever
she was on camera, one could not wait until she was not.  I don't know who
screwed up; Hillary, the director or the writer (which was the same person in
some cases), but this character was a total mess.

A lot of time was wasted on suspense and "cute" scenes to amuse Children (to
off-set the actually darker tones set in this movie than in the last).  This
run time could have been more constructively put towards character development.
A peek into their personalities, a crack in their otherwise flawless appearance
of existence.

Finally, what's amazing about the very beginning of the movie is that it
carries over the same aggravating sexism that Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The
Movie actually flaunted flamboyantly.  In the case of Power Rangers Turbo, it
is less apparent.  However, it is given away by the fact that while the male
rangers are training, Kat (Catherine Sutherland) and Tanya (Nakia Burrise) are
singing Kindergarten songs to a bus full of children on their way to the
tournament (for what purpose, is unknown to me).  It seems like that warriors
who fight the forces of super-powered Aliens on a regular basis should either
already have their skill mastered or be constantly practicing, if not both.

  b. Script Quality

This film is already better than Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie, by
the fact that it included elements from the original series.  Such as the usage
of the Zeo powers (even if it was for just a brief moment).  Alpha 5 looking
more like himself and the Power Chamber looking more like it does in the
television series.  It's also nice the Rangers will look the same in the TV
series as they will in the movie.  Too bad Ernie (Richard Genelle is only seen
for a few seconds at the end of the film).

Power Rangers Turbo was not as heavily saturated with catchy one-liners like
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie was.  This movie had an overall darker
feel than the first did with an enhanced atmosphere of "Getting down to serious
business".  When the Turbo Power Rangers first make their appearance into the
Power Chamber, their walk indicates there is about to be a deadly challenge to
be faced.

It was nice they didn't make Lerigot speak English.  Even Grade A sci-fi such
as Star Trek make it seem like the universal language is English, most of the
time (it was nice of them to give the Klingons their own language, however).
Anyway, I'm getting off the point.  This film reminded me of Star Wars more so
than the last Power Rangers movie (which was professed to feel like Star Wars,
which I didn't feel).  In Star Wars, there is supposedly 6 million languages or
something to that effect.  Lerigot comes off as an authentic
non-Earthling/partial-humanoid, especially with the Jim Henson-class costume
effects.  Too bad they didn't follow the same lead with Divatox and Friends.
Unfortunately, they are cartoony-Earthlike supervillains rather than aliens
with malicious intent.

Some portions moved a lot faster than they should have, however, this is
probably at fault of the Film Editor and not the directors Shuki Levy and/or
David Winning.  However, it never made any sense to me that Tommy would remove
his helmet during combat.  Levy and Danielson was trying to convey that Tommy
believe that by seeing his face, Jason would "snap out of it" but that would
also imply that Tommy is not a very good martial artist.  As anyone in the
field of combat knows to never let your guard down.

The best part of the film was ironically when Jason and Kimberly were made
evil.  Once again, the overall darker overtones expressed in this film made
everything more realistic allowing non-children viewers to take the film more
seriously (compare to 1st season Mighty Morphin Power Rangers episode, "Power
Ranger Punks").

  c. Characterization

Practically non-existent, however it was nice for Jason to give Bulk (Paul
Schier) and Skull (Jason Narvy) the verbal lashing they have long deserved for
being the inappropriate comic reliefs that nobody needs.

There would have been more of an opportunity to focus on characters if they had
made the martial arts tournament an implied occurrence which never made it on
screen.  It was necessary to write a believable story about how Justin, a boy,
could have all this free time to be a Power Rangers, however, it isn't
necessary to consume all this time that could be used into going into exposing
the true nature of who these five teenagers are.  As without that, you really
can't care about these characters as heros.

  d. Direction

David Winning, I can tell, saved this movie from the certain doom Shuki Levy
presented to it.  Almost every episode he and Shell Danielson wrote of Mighty
Morphin Power Rangers wound up a total disaster.  Especially when this
dynamite-duo get together and direct!

This film beats out the first one in the action department, especially with all
of the dangerous looking underwater stunts.  There was only two martial arts
combat sequences, however.  And for a film Based on martial-arts, this is
pretty poor.  It's even worse when you consider that only one of those battle
scenes were done out of costume.  Jason Frank and Johnny Bosch are talented
martial artists (I've seen them perform behind the scenes, they know their
craft).  Not taking further advantage of this isn't good for an action film.
On the other hand, it's obvious that this was supposed to be more of an
adventure, rather than action film (primarily to satisfy the parential
consortium), however, this just didn't go over well with me at all.

The battle sequences in costume made poor use of props, even though they did a
better job than in the last film.  However, both forgot what those weapons were
attached to their belts.  And all the superior visual effects like
blows-to-impervious-uniform-generating-sparks used plentifully in sentai (the
originating genre this movie was based on), was missing in Power Rangers
Turbo.  This is probably because they were trying to satisfy the US audience
used to seeing US-style martial-arts films.  If you want to see this movie for
Japanese-style action, don't.

Still, however, Power Rangers Turbo did not welch on the martial arts.  The
last film made too frequent usage of "wire gags" (flying and what have you) and
not enough raw talent.  Turbo, on the other hand, had plenty of hand-to-hand
combat sequences of high complexity Almost worthy of the Japan Action Club (the
JAC being the source of stunt-persons for high-grade on-screen Japanese
martial-arts).

The "evil" Jason and Kimberly scenes were the best part of the ranger combat
portion towards the end of the movie.  It was believable and well executed.
What was even better was Maligore.  This is the first non-Computer Generated
enemy the rangers have ever faced where it was genuinely demonic looking.  No
foam-rubber here, just one authentic "Alien"-grade monster.

Some might prefer the hard-to-follow Megazord sequences in Mighty Morphin Power
Rangers: The Movie because of the 90's addiction to CGI, however, the CGI was
admittedly rushed and thus the zords appeared as if they were made out of
liquid metal (the same goes for the two monsters they fought, Hornitor and
Scorpitron).  However, the Turbo Megazord looked like back-to-basics, original
Japanese-style robotics involving some pretty neat effects where Divatox was
standing on a hill next to the fight between it and Maligore.  The "size"
proportioning was executed well.  And so was the battle.

 III. Presentation

  a. Audio

Ron Wasserman warned me that his songs were going to come out sounding bad and
that was the case.  They, indeed, mixed his music wrong--so wrong I could
hardly tell he produce it until I heard his voice.  The score was enjoyable,
even though the mix of symphony and hard rock was somewhat strange.  The main
theme song wasn't too bad, but I liked Power Rangers Zeo's theme better.

Speaking of Power Rangers Zeo, unless you're a die-hard fan like yours truly,
you'd probably not notice this, however, in the final scenes where Tommy, Adam
and Jason were fighting in the tournament, they played Power Rangers Zeo's best
battle song: Calling for a Hero.  It was nice hearing that wonderful
composition by Ron's friend Jim Cushinery in surround-sound Dolby stereo.

Sound effects.  They were professional, of course.  However, they were applied
more carefully to provide more realism.  For example, the stomp-like walk of
Maligore and the march of the Turbo Megazord.

  b. Video

What's interesting about this movie is that Kat looked much like a super-model
in the face.  It's obvious they spent a lot of time making her look good (which
is interesting, considering she already does); including throwing her in some
way-too-short jeans.  Because they had a professional motion picture team
working on this film, it is obvious they instructed the camera operators to
de-emphasize Nakia Burrise's nose.  I am not poking fun, it's just that since
glamor is a huge part of the motion-picture industry, I am surprised they did
not pick someone more "flawless".  (It's even more amazing that the Film Editor
didn't clip the scene where Kimberly's rump is prominently displayed after she
is washed ashore).  One of my prime complaints about the first movie was
Kimberly's lack of athletic clothing (fitting her motif of gymnastics).  I
guess my prayers have been answered.

The special effects of Lerigot's wizardry were not less than professional.  It
looked as if they spent a fortune on convincing special effects and computer
graphics.

The abduction of Bulk and Skull actually made their cowardly cries worthy of
our annoyance by how frightening they actually were taken!

The morphing was over-done and should have been completed with a single vocal
command, say, "Turbo Ignition!" but instead, there was this long
ranger-by-ranger morphing sequence similarly to the tiresome Zeo morphing
sequence.  I don't mind the visual effects of the transformation, but there
should have been a five-way split-screen of the rangers being suited rather
than one-by-one.  However, since they only "morph" ONCE during the entire
movie, a lengthy henshin (or transformation) scene was necessary to satisfy the
audience since they weren't ever going to see _that_ again.

It was interesting that once morphed, the rangers ran "super-fast" because in
the originating sentai that Turbo was based on (Violent Dash Task Force
CARRANGER), the CARRANGERs ran "super-fast" (followed by engine-rev and brake
sound effects).

The highlight of visual effects are after they reach the Island Muranthias.
Maligore was the best monster the Power Rangers have ever fought.  The Turbo
Megazord transformation sequence was equal to that of the first movie, and I
thought both were excellent.  Good set construction on the Megazord cockpit,
including realistic camera work (each step the Megazord took, the cockpit
changed angles).

 IV. Movie Review

  a. Good Qualities

Script Content:
  The dialogue was not conspicuously "text-book" generated.  Even though battle
phrases will be duplicated (because there are only many ways to give orders),
the movie managed to avoid pointless one-liners.  The worst aspect of the movie
was Divatox.  This aspect earns a B- Grade.

Director's Efforts:
  Success.  He managed to get Amy Jo Johnson and Austin St. John to come off as
if they were possessed by the devil himself.  All stunts were equal to the TV
series (not comparing against original sentai footage).  This aspect deserves
an A Grade.

Audio Soundtrack:
  They messed up the music a little bit, however, all mistakes are excused with
the usage of Calling For A Hero.  All Sound Effects were flawlessly applied.
This movie's sound (music & effects) easily out-do most tokusatsu (the genre
where sentai comes from).  This aspect deserves an A- Grade.

Visuals:
  The Turbo Megazord was the best I have ever seen the US do as far as
imitation Japanese giant-robot sequences go.  Maligore was the most
threatening, deadliest looking monster ever shown on screen during anything for
the Power Rangers.  If this is how Power Rangers had have started, I do believe
more would take the series more seriously.  This aspect deserves an A.

  b. Bad Qualities

Plot Content:
  A worthless premise.  Earth was in no immediate danger, they were more or
less doing yet another intergalactic being a favor (cf. Masked Rider, 1995).
Because the plot was not related to the characters state of minds at all, this
aspect gets a C- Grade.

Characterization:
  Because they neglected to include any, they get a D- grade in this
department, which strongly detracts from the strength of its plot.

  c. Ending Grade

Even though the characterization was non existent forcing the plot to be empty,
the direction and visual effects saved the film with a strong soundtrack of
sound effects to support the on-screen performances and special effects.  It
was worth the $4.50 I paid to see it.

So, I give this movie a B- grade.

				Dairenn Lombard
				[email-masked]
				http://www.cyberverse.com/~piero/