Picks and Pans Review: Turbo: a Power Rangers Movie

Jason David Frank, Hilary Shepard Turner, Catherine Sutherland

When invited a 7-year-old pal to this movie, the second film featuring those helmet-headed teen superheros who karate-chop and kick-box the bad guys into submission on afternoon TV, she demurred. “No way,” she said. “I’d be a brat if I went.” “A brat?”

“Yeah, a little brat. Power Rangers are for little kids,” she told me.

She eventually agreed to go and, while she wouldn’t admit to actually liking Turbo—”They stole so much from Star Wars,” she said knowingly—when the film broke down with 15 minutes left and I asked if she wanted to split, she firmly said, “No. Let’s stay.”

We did. The film resumed, the Power Rangers triumphed and all was right with the world. For anyone who wants to know the plot, it’s some mumbo jumbo about an evil interplanetary female pirate, Divatox (Turner, wildly over-the-top, but the only character likely to hold a grown-up’s interest), kidnapping a hairy pint-size wizard (“He’s so completely stolen from the Ewoks,” my pal whispered) and the Power Rangers—or the “Power Pukes,” as Divatox calls them—rescuing him.

At the packed Saturday morning screening I caught in Washington, at least a half-dozen audience members, all under four feet tall, came dressed as Power Rangers. Isn’t it nice that those Halloween costumes are being used more than once? (G)