Slight change to the regular schedule this week as it was my Dad's birthday yesterday and time got away from me, but I'm no longer ill and back to (almost) full health and ready to start focusing and channelling my energy into wathcing some really dodgy cinema again. Which is all the better really, as this weeks FTW pick; Ninja Cheerleaders looks like it's going to be a... challenging watch. "Three college cheerleaders use their martial arts skills to save their Sensei from mafia kidnappers but must keep their extra-curricular activities a secret". I'll be honest with you, I'd made my mind up the minute I saw "Ninja Cheerleaders" that I was covering this film because I'm sorta hoping and praying it's one of those 'Jesus Christ, what the fuck is this shit!?' kind of movies, and not y'know, one of those slightly soft porn grey area kind of movies that post-middle aged men with big beer bellies watch in their string vests and repugnant underpants... or it could shock us all and transpire to actually be a semi-halfway decent comedy movie. But uh yeah, I'm slightly suspicious it's gonna be a pseudo soft porn...
April (Ginny Weirick), Favourite Band: The Killers, Monica (Maitland McConnell), Favourite Band: The Strokes, and Courtney (Trishelle Cannatella), Favourite Band: LA Philharmonic are three very attractive supermodel types and college cheerleaders, apparently so attractive that literally the entire college, teachers as well, are creepily perving after them... who also just so happen to be crazy good at martial arts thanks to their teacher, Sensei Hiroshi (George Takei... what wait?! GEORGE TAKEI!?). Not just content with being a martial arts teacher though, Hiroshi seems to have nice bit on the side in the form of a strip bar... at which, naturally, his three star pupils also form a part of his employ. I mean they moonlight as strippers too, or go-go-dancers if you like. To be fair to the girls they're dancing to raise cash for an Ivy League Scholarship; $250,0000, so fair play, but after a night of studying and a day of tests the girls arrive at the dojo to discover it broken into and ransacked. Similarly at the strip club, where they find all their earnings stolen, bouncer Manny (Omar J. Dorsey) has been shot and Sensei Hiroshi missing. Immediately heading to Jimmy The Snitch (Max Perlich)'s place on account of he was being suspicious the night previous, they learn that said ransacking and abduction was ordered by Victor Lazzaro, and after calling on Manny at the hospital, who survived surgery, they learn Victor Lazzaro previously owned the club house before it was brought out by Hiroshi. After a brief brush in with the law; Detective Harris (Larry Poindexter) is convinced the girls have something to do with the break in at the club, the girls paradoxically decide to pursue picking out music and collecting their outfits for a big dance off they have coming up (?), I mean it is the last thing on their checklist to completing their savings but uh... ok... teaching a man who is literally credited as "beergut" (Eric Stonestreet) some manners along the way. After April has a slightly minor meltdown, hey I guess even supermodel martial artists get anxiety sometimes, the girls stock up on weaponry and deduce that Hiroshi was kidnapped so that he'd turn over the deed for the club. Making their way to Lazzaro's place, Victor Lazzaro (Michael Peré) is having a meeting with some stereotypical gangsters until the girls unceremoniously gatecrash it. Playing it cool though Victor offers them a compromise; the safe delivery of Hiroshi, and the safe delivery of the uh.. safe... in exchange for the deed to the club. Understanding they have no other option the girls agree to the exchange, however all of this is witnessed by Victor's personal... assassin I guess, Kinji (Natasha Jai) who pledges to take care of them. Later that evening the girls and Victor agree for the exchange to take place in exactly one hour, giving the girls just enough time to do a bit of cheerleading. But when Victor's hired goons show up to crash the party, the girls take things to the locker room on the pretence of carrying out the exchange, but instead decide to dispatch of the goons pretty handily. After interrogating one of the goons the girls learn where Hiroshi is being held, despite a minor interruption from Kinji, who almost gets arrested herself before skewering Detective Harris with a crossbow bolt. Instead of immediately rushing there and busting out their teacher, there is the small matter of winning a strip-off to be dealt with first... because I guess there hasn't been enough sexuality in this movie until now... but hey it's for $50,000 and their last milestone, so the girls stop by and smash the dance off, then proceed to fuck shit up over at Lazzaro's warehouse and are just about to rescue Hiroshi, when they burst in to discover he took care of things himself pretty well. Easily besting Victor Lazzaro in a fight and shooting him with his own gun when he tries to turn the tables. However any reunion is short lived as not far behind the girls is Kinji, who announces her dramatic entrance into the room, naturally, and is able to best all three girls in combat. Stepping in to fight her, Hiroshi and her duel until Hiroshi is finally able to overcome her, just as Detective Harris and the police step in to arrest everybody. In the closing scenes we learn the girls and Hiroshi were set free whilst Don Lazaaro pledges revenge for his fathers death.
Lordy lordy lord, that was unspeakably bad. Apparently this movie was a comedy? Which bit? I've had more amusing trips to the doctors to be honest. And regrettably this doesn't tip the scale in the opposite direction either, it's not one of the 'so good it's bad' kind of flicks, it just kind of... is... that dangerous beige middle ground of being completely bland and un-interesting but not so incredibly bollocks so as to be amusing in a morbidly curious kind of way.
To begin with the acting was shockingly bad. These three girls certainly looked outstanding, they looked like they could fight - to a degree - and dance... I mean I can't really be a judge of that, haven't watch a whole lot of movies about strippers or cheerleaders to be honest, but their dancing looked pretty decent to me, but act. Oh absolutely not. Ah that's maybe being a little bit harsh, of the 3 Maitland McConnell stood out the most, as being at least passable on occasion, but the acting here was horrendous. Every line felt like a read, with barely any palatable emotion and virtually no enthusiasm was put into any scene. And it didn't stop with the girls either, nobody comes out of this thing unscathed. Even George Takei at his absolute worst stood out like a gold star amongst the talent pool here. Everything about this screamed phone it in until the pay out.
As touched on previously, the entire premise behind this was that it was a comedy that was being produced, but I couldn't single out one conceivable moment that I actually thought was amusing. Unless you are really into girls twisting men's testicles? Or watching pervy loser men make fools of themselves? Even the comedic relief by way of the cheerleader teacher, a character so unimportant I haven't even bothered to credit him in my plot rundown, was about as funny as a urinary tract infection. You might think I'm going in hard, but I genuinely cannot determine how this is classed as a comedy? It's an action film, I'll give it that. There are fight scenes, a plot with a resolution, but a comedy. No.
And on the fight scene tangent, that is one part of this movie that genuinely gets a green light. The girls, as aforementioned, at least looked a bit like they could fight, and the fight scenes at least looked a bit like they were choreographed... to a degree... first fight scene I fully expected a sloppy, overproduced, overacted mess but it was genuinely proper fighting and that tangent mostly continued. Even the final sword fight at the end was decent enough, although not completely sold that Natasha Jai knew what she was doing. Unfortunately this is about the only one of the movies very few positives.
Cinematography wise, the production was genuinely fine, although there was some odd and illfitting framing choices for a good portion of the film; shots composed incorrectly, and moments where scenes transitioned inconsistently that really hammered home the low production values. There was also a fair degree of padding with the movie panning to interrogation scenes between Detective Harris and one, or all, of the three girls littered throughout the narrative which, whilst filing the storyline gaps, and acting as bumper transitions, also broke up the flow of the narrative and sometimes did more harm than good.
Storyline wise, this whole thing was just a spaghetti dinner. With the girls purposely making decisions to cram in sections of the plot that involved them dancing, or cheerleading with literally no other justification than to get the money for college. One of the central characters actually questions the logic of this! In the movie! It just made no sense in the context of the situation. Ironically the girls are portrayed as strong female role models; intelligent, self confident, more than just a pretty face and yet the movie does everything it can to rinse their sexuality and femininity. They are portrayed as being unhappy with having to dance and strip for money, given, but you still fucking left it in there movie. The final strip-dance is 4 minutes long!
I literally got nothing from watching this. It was a comedy that wasn't funny. An action movie tarred by a completely terrible narrative built up around it. Some of the most wooden, painfully amateur acting I've ever seen to date. A storyline that made no fucking sense, was acknowledged as making no fucking sense by one of the characters, and yet they still went about it! A central theme being built around female "empowerment" and yet taking every available opportunity to do nothing but demoralise and sexualize the 3 main characters. An outstanding example of stunt casting with George Takei. Perhaps the only redeeming factors being the fight scenes were actually alright, and some of the stock music numbers were decent enough. Otherwise this was just a mostly unpleasant and mostly unentertaining experience. Gimme an A! Gimme a T! Gimme a Rocious! A-TROCIOUS!!! 1 out of 5.
