It's Snoring Time

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Who remembers Power Rangers from back in the day? It was basically a playground code word for 'lets have a fight'! You'd find somebody that you didn't really like, invite them for a game of Power Rangers, and then spend the next thirty minutes kicking the shit out of them. I was always White Ranger because I was male and, most importantly, I was white. If anything was ever squarely designed to wean kids onto the BNP it must have been fucking Power Rangers which put labels onto its characters and then colour co-ordinated the shit out of them. Pink Ranger was the girl, Black Ranger was a black guy, and Yellow Ranger was.. well, I'm sure you can guess. Apparently the chap that played the original Blue Ranger ultimately felt that he had to leave the show because of his sexuality and the rampant homophobia that was prevalent behind the scenes. In which case, I'm honestly fucking surprised that he didn't morph into the fucking Rainbow Ranger with his assigned Zord being a 70ft mechanical recreation of Freddie Mercury on all fours.

The new big-screen adaptation of the series does a few little things to try to rectify this situation, but then fucks up a few things along the way too. So the black character is now the Blue Ranger which is good. The problem is that he's also depicted as being autistic in a film that's forgotten that being autistic isn't in itself a superpower. From my limited understanding of the condition, people with autism can suffer from massive emotional difficulties, however here it simply means that on the one hand the character doesn't understand jokes, but on the other he does have a pretty good memory. I've lost count of the amount of movies I've seen this cliché depicted in, however if each of the films were represented by a matchstick and I threw them onto the floor, I reckon this character could probably tell me. The new film also maintains that Pink Ranger has to be a girl because clearly their thinking was that pink is a girls colour. Flowers are pink, ribbons are pink, there's even a female singer called Pink, for fucks-sake. “How much evidence do you need that pink is for women”, you can almost hear this franchise screaming.. in.. my head. “The only guy that could ever want to play Pink Ranger must be that big gay Blue Ranger from the show!”

Oh, but before you accuse these new Rangers of being homophobic too, there is a lesbian character to make up for their crimes of the past. It's just a shame that the film has confused being a lesbian with being a miserable bitch. I was under the impression that lesbianism was when a female is sexually attracted to a person of the same gender, however if this film is anything to go by it simply means that you need to cheer the fuck up. Although in defence of this, I've fancied girls for a long time now and it's only ever caused me grief too. Just in case you thought that the lesbian and the Pink Ranger might actually be men in disguise though, to help reassure you that they're not, the filmmakers have decided to put a big old pair of titties into the design of their suit. I have no idea why they felt the urge to do that. I mean, why put tits onto the girls suits but not big plastic cocks onto the guys? Because that would be weird to do in a film aimed at children? Yeah.. it would, wouldn't it?! I mean at least a plastic cock would be useful for a Ranger. At the very least you could hang your weapon off it when it's getting a bit too heavy. What are you going to do with big pointy Madonna-tits in your costume? The best I can think is to maybe lunge at a giant in an attempt at taking its eyes out.

Interestingly, a script was written for this film by Max Landis in which the Pink Ranger was in fact a male. Like Trump when he'd lose people from The Apprentice or perhaps even one of the missiles he'll use to kick start a third World War, Landis was promptly fired. This is ironic because having shafted him, the film that they seem to have attempted to replicate was his superhero movie Chronicle. However rather than reaching the heights of Chronicle, this Power Rangers movie seems happy to have settled with simply being chronic instead. The story begins with the character of Jason being involved in a car crash and in many ways this was metaphorical of the remainder of the film. Jason will eventually become Red Ranger and therefore the leader of the gang, which is despite the fact that he's clearly a massive annoying knob. You remember what happened to Jeff Goldblum when he stepped into his teleporter at the same time as a fly got in? Well, Red Ranger here looks like Zac Efron stepped into at the same time as Fozzy Bear from The Muppets. He also has a weird hair-do that looks like it was inspired by the style previously sported by 1950's ventriloquist dummies. I think this may have inspired his acting style too.

From this point on, a group of five high-schoolers end up on a mountainside when an explosion causes them to be embed with super-powers. Because kids just love mountainsides. “Want to play some Nintendo?” my friends would ask me when I was in school, “Nah”, I'd respond, “I'm going to the mountainside tonight for a bit of a linger”. At this exact time, a witch known as Rita Repulsa is dragged up from the ocean and begins her plans of destroying the world. “That's a coincidence”, I hear you shout. She's also dragged up from the ocean by one of the Rangers Dad's... for fuck's-sake. On the bright side, this is the moment that we'll get to see Bryan Cranston on screen, right? Everybody loves Bryan Cranston, don't they?! I mean Breaking Bad, that's so good! Well, here he's less Breaking Bad and more just.. bad. Which is fine. His performance is pretty much like having us stare at a brick wall with the only difference being that the wall he's playing is actually digital.. or something. Cranston is basically just cameo-ing in this and so if he wants to quickly cash-in by reading some lines off an autocue then whatever. At the end of the day, this is a film which includes the line, “What have we here? Five little Rangers all tied up like fish”, so it's hardly Shakespeare. I mean who the fuck has ever tried to tie up a fish?!

Despite all of that however, I'd be lying if I said I failed to find any pleasure from Power Rangers. Once the characters had all suited up and started fighting the rock monsters then things became the right type of crap to find fun. At one point, a little robot guy explained to the Rangers that they all have a giant robot each. The giant robots took the form of the creatures that were the most powerful on our planet at the point that a magical crystal arrived, which he states was the time of the “dinosaurs”. He doesn't then go onto elaborate why one of these robots has turned into a Saber-toothed tiger which existed at a completely separate time to the dinosaurs but oh well. I guess the crystals must have arrived on our planet at the same time that an episode of The Flintstones was being aired. Anyway, the arrival of these robots at least reminded me that there's a new Transformers movie on the way and so perhaps Power Rangers wasn't so bad after all. I mean- it was bad. But at least it wasn't three hours long and directed by Michael fucking Bay. Beyond its depiction of a disability and sexuality, it's biggest problem was really that it tried to be angsty and dark but didn't have the talent to do angst and had the wrong fucking franchise for dark. I do look forward to the sequel as things did pick up near the end. I just hope that when it reaches for its belt, it simply decides to morph into something a little less shit. Thanks for reading, motherfuckers, and see you next time.