When you take a cheesy, low-budget TV show and turn it into a moody, semi-serious movie, what did you expect to happen? Power Rangers is a moderately well made (relatively speaking) but uninspired action film that can't decide what it wants to be, when in reality the answer is obvious: it should be… needs to be… a balls-to-the-wall whacky adventure full of action and weird characters.

That isn't what it is.

Power Rangers spends the first hour, if not more, developing its cast of teenagers - who all look like they are in their well into twenties - and trying to convince us we should care about any of them. The character development isn't terrible, but it is predictable - and worse, it pushes almost all of the film’s action to its lingering minutes. The Rangers don't even morph into a team until the very end, an even dumber mistake.

I'm going to guess, back in the show’s very first episode, the characters were in costume and fighting ridiculous monsters within minutes.

The movie is better made than you'd expect, but it's also just as misguided. Power Rangers falls victim to the take-things-way-too-seriously philosophy that has crushed so many movies in recent years; more fun, more action, and more monsters would have gone a long way.

Review by Erik Samdahl unless otherwise indicated.