Power Rangers

As the decades have gone by, we have seen a plethora of films based on comic books, TV shows, video games and the like. The list is endless: "Batman", "Spider-Man", "Captain America", "Ironman", "Guardians of the Galaxy", "Dr. Strange", "Pacific Rim", "Thor", etc. Once again, we have yet another film based on a TV show in the form of "Power Rangers".

Five teenagers, Jason/Red Ranger (Dacre Montgomery), Kimberly/Pink Ranger (Naomi Scott), Billy/Blue Ranger (RJ Cyler), Zack/Black Ranger (Ludi Lin) and Trini/Yellow Ranger (Becky G.) become super-powered warriors in this reboot of the long-running kids' action franchise. The outcast teens are thrust into battle against the evil witch and former Ranger Rita Repulsa (Elizabeth Banks)in a fight for the fate of the world.

Of course, before all this happens, the green Rangers must go through a rigorous training period taught by Alpha 5 (voice of Bill Hader) and lead up by nemesis of Repulsa, Zordon (Bryan Cranston). Their powers came from inadvertently finding a strange spacecraft and obtaining these abilities. Through Zordon and Alpha 5, the teens must harness their abilities in order to save the world as we know it.

Others to round out the cast are David Denman as Sam Scott, Jason's father, Matt Shively as Damo, Cody Kearsley as Hawkeye and Robert Maloney as Ted Hart.

Considering the limited feature film experience in the director's chair, Dean Israelite ("Project Almanac" '15) plus shorts and TV definitely caught the angst of these outcast teenagers so they seemed so real. Through proper staging and pacing, these five teens seemed to connect well as they continued getting to know one another--this is good direction. It was cleverly written by John Gatins ("Summer Catch" '01, "Hardball" '01, "Coach Carter" '05, "Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story" '05, "Reel Steel" '11,  "Flight" '12), based on a story by Matt Sazama, Burk Sharpless, Michele Mulroney and Kieran Mulroney based on "Power Rangers" created by Haim Saban which is based on "Power Rangers" created by Shuki Levy. After seeing the trailer of this film, I had great trepidation of this--the trailer did not sell it, but after viewing it, it was certainly much better than I ever thought it would be. Of course, Gatins is a seasoned writer and I'm sure this had everything to do with it. This had a couple of slow places in script and it was a bit predictable, but given the premise, a small amount of predictability can be forgiven. If you like this writer, he is slated to write "Reel Steel 2" which has been announced. And the visual effects predominantly created by Digital Domain, Method Studios and Scanline VFX were stunning and actually helped tell the story.

Certainly the audience demographic here is that of the child to teenager bracket, but there's something for everyone here--interesting plot, good writing and knockout visual effects. This is true and pure escapism at its best. Grab the popcorn!

Out of 4 Stars: 3                                  Rated: PG-13                                   124mins.