Effects drain energy from ‘Power Rangers’
As a superhero origins story, the “Power Rangers” reboot hopes to attract a new generation to its saga of five teenage misfits transforming into heroic saviors of planet Earth.
Over the top and expansive, with a nearly constant stream of digital effects, this “Power Rangers” begins with an awkward prologue set 600 million years or so ago that introduces a good but soonto-be-dead creature, Zordon, and a very bad one, Rita Repulsa.
Then it’s present day in picturesque Angel Grove, where high school football star Jason Scott (Dacre Montgomery) has a terrifying auto accident, one that ends his college dreams and finds him with an electronic ankle bracelet in “Breakfast Club”-style school detention.
Here he meets disgraced Kimberly (Naomi Scott) and brilliant, enthusiastic and autistic Billy (RJ Cyler).
In the film’s best, most intense scene — one that has nothing to do with special effects — Jason suddenly defends Billy against a redheaded bully.
Soon, on a mountainside above Angel Grove, these three meet Zack (Ludi Lin) and Trini (Becky G) and discover the mysterious colored stones that will eventually empower them and bond them as a multi-ethnic team: the Power Rangers.
Inside an elaborate cave that sits below a small pond, the quintet meets cutesy robot Alpha 5 (cutesy-ly voiced by Bill Hader) and the mysterious Zordon (Bryan Cranston), visible only by his head, which juts out of a shape-shifting brick wall that resembles a patterned sheet.
In a tense special effects sequence, the teens each test their newfound abilities with a flying leap across a canyon, an echo of watching Superman discover his capabilities to run faster than a speeding bullet, etc.
What these acolytes don’t yet have is the ability to morph into battle as armored warriors.
Now would be a fine time to remember how the longago TV series, imported originally from Japan, was called “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.”
Here we wait — and then we wait some more — for the morphing to begin in time for them to save Angel Grove from evil alien — and quite exotically strange looking — Rita (Elizabeth Banks, going for broke in what looks like a Peter Pan-esque green fantasy outfit).
As “Power Rangers” ends, the feeling is definite: They’ll soon be back.
(“Power Rangers” is violent, explosive, destructive but never sexual.)