Pocket Ninjas is not a movie that deserves any kind of detailed criticism. It is plainly a movie that was trying to capitalize off of the recent craze of kid based ninja movies. And by craze, I am obviously referring to 3 Ninjas and its sequels. Thats right, Pocket Ninjas is your low budget direct to video version of a passing forgettable children’s movie, and when you fail to even live up to its sequels, you obviously did something wrong. You should NOT be making movies if your attempt at the craft fails to live up to the Hulk Hogan classic 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain.
The movie is essentially training montage followed by training montage. And half of these montages involve grown men slowly moving through moves that look like they have never actually been shown. It looks like they are being shown how to perform the moves as the filming is taking place by a student who has just been shown the moves himself 5 minutes prior to the cameras being turned on. And they apparently never took a second take, as all the fumbling movements are right there in the final product.
The story to the movie is basically non-existent. A dude who runs a karate school in a strip mall (Right in between a liquor store and a barber shop) gives Kabuki masks to three of his students (who, despite their black belts don’t appear to be trained very well) and sends them off to fight the local street gangs. The street gangs are shown sneaking around in trash cans and luring people around with money at the end of a fishing hook, a tactic that has always shown to be fruitful against great minds like Wimpy, Popeye’s hamburger loving buddy. I’d like to say that the gang is harmless, but they use this tactic to kidnap and chain up (The rape is only implied) one of the kids mothers, so it’s hard to call them harmless. Although their constant struggle with a group of poorly trained karate kids lends credence to my original statement. Anyway, the gang is headed by some other kid who sucks at pretend fighting and he agrees to helping some guys dump their toxic waste. The ninja kids show up and thwart his gang activities by fighting him in some virtual reality video game that features Robert Z’dar and his OWN special brand of slow motion fighting.
Want more detail on the movie? Then watch the fucking thing yourself, because thats all the detail I’m getting into. It was an abysmal piece of garbage thats very existence is a cold hard slap in the face of every person who has ever dreamt of one day making a movie of their own. Fuck this movie. It isn’t even a fun bad movie. Samurai Cop is so god damn enjoyable in is inane baditude. It is a pile of garbage, no doubt, but it is a charming pile of garbage. Despite all its glaringly obvious flaws, it still appears to be a movie that someone put at least an ounce of effort into. I would recommend this movie to no one, even those of you who enjoy bad movies. It isn’t even enjoyable on that level.
As a movie: 0/10
As a shitty movie: 0/10
Seriously, fuck this shit.
-Dan