#ivan ooze

MMPR the movie begins the way most epics do... by having 5 teenagers with attitude skydive to aerosmith's half assed cover of higher ground. Both times i've rewatched this movie I forgot this was the song and both times I burst into laughter for a good two minutes. It is such a weird way to open even this film. Also Bulk and Skull are there and as usual their awesome, being afraid to jump and apparently taking half an hour to do so... and naturally only doing so for free snacks. I would also only jump out of a plane for free snacks. These guys are my people.

The film has a hilarously cheesy soundtrack, choosing a lot of stock songs and either using weird covers or just having i'ts own songs, like one song rambling about "danger boy and danger girl". Mostly though it's da hits for the parents who will not be watching this film if they can help it. Find your own way home billy daddy's not watching this. We get the aformentioned over the top higher ground cover and when the rangers casually rollerblade after their charity skydiving, it's set to a cover of "Free ride' which doe sobjectively slap but never ceases to make me laugh. We also get Shampoo's banging song Trouble, a kick ass cover of the theme my friend @davenskilnyk obsesses over to this day, and end the film on a combo of I GOT THE POWER nad van halen's dreams. Which suprisngly works. The credits also has a techno remix of kung fu fighting, which really sums up this whole film better than I ever could hope.

The film has the same fun campy vibe of the show, simply injected with cocaine: everything feels bigger from the budget, to the soundtrack to the villian. If you want to relive your childhood with the mighty morphin power rangers, this is the best way to do it: a quick breezy 90 minute shot of nostalgia that's hilaroius in all the perfectly wrong ways.

The plot is fairly standard but works fine enough: Lord Zed, the power rangers veiny somewhat terrifying nemisis, decides to awaken an ancient evil to kill those teenagers he just can't seem to murder what good. That evil is the best part of this film, mr Ivan Ooze. Ivan is played to perfection by vetran actor Paul Freeman, who while skilled dramatically FULLY understood what franchise he was in. Ivan is a walking joke machine: Genuinely funny at times, like mentioning the brady bunch reunion among the darkest moments of humanity he missed, hiilaroiusly over the top always, and delightfully charamaatic. Zed and Rita are no slouches in over the top antics nor hamminess so it really says something Ooze shows them up when they do share scenes. It's a wonder he wasn't used for the Boom comics and hopefully the current universe will. I get he wasn't canon but he's easy enough to graft in there and freeman is still around.

Ooze is also a very competent villain: his plan for the most part is pretty damn thought out: He sends his ooze men to distract the rangers, where we get a very long fight scene that's worth it for the sheer amount of weird shit we get thrown as having a higher budget meant the writers threw in a lot of weird shit: Aisha has headlamps for her helmet, billy uses a grappling hook, and billy also dips his hand in his enemies blood and makes a catchphrase.

While ooze easily breaks into the command center, breaks alpha and breaks everything leaving Zordon in some kind of death avacado in the middle of where his tube was.

This also means the rangers are depowered and out of luck while Ooze easily traps Zed and Rita in a snowglobe as Zed was following the doctor eggman school of unleashing evil abominations and thinking about the consequences later.

Ivan's plan to conquer the world is somehow chilling, painfully 90's, and gloriously convoluted all at once. So his plan is to distribute his ooze to children

As a fun substance that doesn't require you to remember you are one but is fun and encourages kids to act out, throw it in their parents faces and generally go forth and be 90s. When it reaches their parents it brainwashes them using lightning after effects to go dick up his ecto morphicons, a truly fantastic name. Basically his own zords, which itself is dope: it is a treat to see a big bad get his own zord and one that is only not eating the world right now because Lord Zed forgot to plug it in over night.

There are so many delightful holes in this plan from "What if a parent dosen't touch the ooze" to "what if they just throw it otu" to "why didn't you just try and market this to adults as a holistic healing scam or as condoms shaped like ivan ooze's face?" "Why don't any of the other adults we see panicing later do anything about this?" "Why is this a subplot?"

The last one I can answer: they needed to pad the runtime so they added Fred a kid sidekick whose dad gets hyjacked and was also in the skydiving fundraiser for the school. There's no arc.. Fred just wants to save his dad from forced labor then getting told to jump off a cliff. And that part.. is genuinely creepy as is the dazed acting from the brainwashed parents. Less creepy when Ivan and Goldar enjoy making one dance for them because their bored which is weirdly wholesome: what their doing is awful but you rarely get to see Goldar actually relax and Ivan is a better boss than rita or zed. No really, he treats goldar with respect, only gets angry with his minons when they screw up, and the one he mostly abuses is pig monster.

OH yes to save on puppets i'm assuming they didn't make a puppet for any of rita's other minons and instaed just kinda made a wild pig instead

Really the plot is just there to pad things out so they can make it 90 minute when you could've just had.. ivan ooze's ooze men or his tenga warriors dig it for him instead. Oh yeah he gets the tengas that would end up ins eason 3 for some reason. They nearly kill the depowered rangers, get stopped by a lady with magic sticks and get killed for their failures.

That way you could focus more on the adventure plot: If your not going to have the rangers on screen for most of your power rangers movie, likely because the suits were a waking nightmare to work in despite being fancier than the sentai suits, then at least just give the kids more dumb fun action on a jungle planet with a magical owl lady.

Basically our heroes go to look for an ultimate power, nearly die, then Dulcea, a guardian and old student of zordons shows up. She also threatens to murder them so they won't get themselves killed trying to do this.. and then does a full 180, baby, when they reveal their all students of zordon. She's entirely find with teenagers recklessly risking their lives if the giant tube man say's it's cool yo.

So she gives them ninja powers based on their animal spirits: The Falcon for Tommy, Crane for Kim, Bear for Aisha, Ape for Rocky, Wolf for my man billy and for adam

God bless Johnny Young Bosh for that delivery. He really did not get nearly enough to do. Also Rocky is told he has the "Wisdom" of an ape...

SO our heroes have to go on a deadly quest that involves fighting a really bitching practical effects bone dinosaur. Every film should have a practical effects bitfching bone dinosaur. Can you imagine Dennis Quaid riding one of those in the substance? Majestic.

They then fight some less exciting guardian mosnters.. not bad designs the fight just goes on for 80 years.

This all leads to the climax. While Child Sidekick of the Week #87 helps rally the kids and bulk and skull to save their parents, don't ask why Bulk and skull were there, the rangers have a robot riot against ooze's robots.

The cgi here is...

Hilarious. It's also baffling as they could've made zord suits and just had people punch each other. It works on tv. CGI was NOT ready for this. I mean now if we ever get another power rangers movie yeah, sure, but back then it just looks so much worse compared to the actual zord

The budget's lower sure but damn does it look decent. The first stage of the fight is just kinda weak and ivan gets the upper hand by fuzing with his zord. Thankfully after saving the kids for their b plot, tommy connects with the ninja megazord and the fight begins in earnest.

It's then we get one of the truly great climaxes of all time: so at the skydiving findraiser for the obsveatory, it was mentioned a comet was passing through. And instead of bringing audrey 2, da do, or ending Avatar the Last Airbender, our heroes plan is to get ivan in position so the comet hits him. And how do they paralyze him? do they use a cool new technique or the ways of the ninja? Do they have bulk and skull grow giant and hold him down? No my friends.. this one is more glorious. As I mentioned before they stomp him in the nuts. They knee him in the boingloings. They obliterate his tiny dancers. The sweep the sack. They knee the big bad in the groin and leave him to die by comet

It's so beautifully dumb, so wonderfully crass. Few children's film end with the villian getting hit in the groin by a giant robots and more should. I don't think there's much you could do to make Dune Part 2 better but having Paul knee Feyd in the junk while both are piloting giant fighting machines.

So the day is saved via nutshot, the heroes celebrate as a celebration just. .manfiests set to van halen, Fred is teased as a ranger and Bulk and Skull take credit and the rangers roll their eyes. Hey come on they fire hosed a bunch of parents from going off a cliff. Their heroes too.

This movie is nonsense. Pure, joyous, oozy nutshotty kung fu fighting techno remixed nonsense. This is not a good movie.. but it is a throughly ENJOYABLE film for being so dumb. The actors all know what their in, the writers know what their making, it's a very dumb movie designed to tell toys and entertain children and it did so well while also entertaining this grown man. I respect movies that try, that really challenge you, that do something new or unique or tell a tale from a perspective that hasn't gotten it's say, that push boundries.