03/28/97
MOVIE REVIEW: Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie
Kids deserve better than this

By MICHAEL JANUSONIS
Journal-Bulletin Arts Writer

*1/2 (out of five)
Starring Jason David Frank, Steve Cardenas, Johnny Yong Bosch, Catherine Sutherland, Nakia Burrise, Blake Foster, Paul Schrier, Jason Narvy, Austin St. John, Hilary Shepard Turner, Richard Genelle. A 20th Century Fox picture written by Shuki Levy and Shell Danielson, directed by David Winning and Levy. Rated PG contains violence. Running time: 101 minutes.

With its bold colors, nonstop movement, snazzy vehicles, overacting and mesmerizing violence, Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie is the kind of mindless garbage that too often passes for children's entertainment these days.

Unlike the last Power Rangers movie, which was also based on the hit TV series and which I rather enjoyed for its sense of mystery and fate, this one uses your standard good-versus-evil sword-and-sorcery hook, complete with kindly wizard, magic wand and evil villainess.

The Power Rangers -- five young superheroes who, by day, are five atypical, over-aerobicized teenagers (who look about 23) -- are called on to help stop the evil queen Divatox from kidnapping the wizened wizard Lerigot and stealing his magic key, which will unleash the fire monster Maligore from his volcanic home.

Lerigot looks like the plasticized mess that would result if you mated Yoda, the elf of The Empire Strikes Back, with a Troll doll, complete with purple-streaked yellow hair.

Divatox (Hilary Shepard Turner) rides around in a nifty fish-shaped submarine, and dresses like a dominatrix with low-cut costumes and a golden mask. She wants to mate with Maligore so she can rule the universe. Yet because Maligore is made of molten material, one wonders how this could possibly happen. Wisely, the writers never try to explain.

Divatox also has a couple of cohorts in plastic faces and costumes that look uncomfortable and unwieldy. When Divatox slices off the arm of one of them, we see a mass of tangled wires.

The Power Ranger teens turn into pastel-suited, helmeted do-gooders who have super powers to stop all this wickedness, which takes place on movie sets that look as though they were left over from some 1940s serial. They include an old Spanish galleon, a stone temple with a fiery well and a volcano just ready to blow.

Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie is as corny as it is trite. But the children at a recent screening seemed to delight in seeing their favorite TV characters on the big screen, no matter how nonsensical.

For everyone else, consider yourself warned.