Super Awesome North Shore Ninjas

Before I moved to Texas, I sometimes made extra money pet sitting. One of my regular clients was a very nice Danish lady with a psychotic cat. She did know, though. The cat’s name was Hissy.

Anyway, one of the last times I watched her place it turned out she’d downgraded her cable package and among the few channels she still got was the one run by the local high school. This was mostly a continuous loop of informational videos on their sports teams, little movies showing the school mascot (Tommy the Titan) crushing enemies of school spirit, and telecomm projects.

What’s most amazing of all is some of them were even worth watching.

After our opening credits (and a sound byte that probably came from the old Ninja Turtles arcade game) the movie opens on hotshot reporter May O’Reilly reporting on a series of thefts thought to be run by some evilnik calling himself “the Dicer.” Her boss comes in looking for someone in the newsroom willing to look more closely into the thefts, and over the objections of her cameraman, May volunteers. Is that a picture of Ernie Kovacs over the boss’s door?

At the mall where the next robbery’s supposed to be going down, the camera’s still grousing over May having to volunteer for dangerous assignments. As she’s telling him not to be such a wimp, they run into a couple of toughs who see them, grab wiffle bats and chase May around the building.

She runs into an air conditioner and knocks herself out. As she’s fading in and out of consciousness, suddenly action music plays and four brightly-colored blobs beat up the thugs.

May comes around in a basement where four weirdoes in colorful pajamas are sitting around playing Goldeneye. They’re the Super Awesome North Shore Ninjas, it turns out (the North Shore meaning the north suburbs of Chicago), mentored by Master Sliver, who appears to be somebody’s kid brother.

He explains their origin from the beginning as we cut away to a darkened room where a guy with a distorted voice finds out a bunch of weirdoes in pajamas beat up his underlings. Gotta say, I was pleasantly surprised when our villain didn’t break into a coughing fit after his evil laugh.

We return to the basement, having missed the story of the ninjas’ secret origin. When May tries to leave, the red guy stops her, prompting an argument with the blue guy, prompting the red guy to declare he’s had enough and storm out. I love how they play this thing. The hothead storming out’s played exactly like the cliché it is, with almost laughably underplayed anger on the red guy’s part.

However, then the movie commits its only real stumble, in my opinion. As the remaining ninjas swear May to secrecy, Sliver hits a button that makes the old Ninja Turtles theme song play. Yeah, thanks, we got it.

The movie bounces back fast, though. After that we goofy little profiles of each of the ninjas. And for a high school telecomm project, the blue guy’s staff-twirling before his was actually pretty good.

After the ninjas drop May off at her place, she apologizes for freaking out on them. They shrug it off. “Yeah, I mean, look at us.”

As soon as they’re out of sight one of Dicer’s thugs shows up and grabs May, and the blue guy senses something’s wrong…he forgot to tell May when they’d be showing up so she could interview them. They find a note from the thugs, but realize it’s in Japanese and they don’t know Japanese, until the orange guy shows them it’s just in a cartoony Asian font. The thugs taped it upside down. Probably to troll the ninjas.

Anyway, the Dicer challenges them to a battle to the death on the parking garage of a mall. The blue guy tells the others to be ready for anything (“yes, anything!”) as they head up, and come face-to-face (or…mask) with the Dicer himself. And about a gabillion of his thugs.

Including a black-clad girl with a whip.

The battle begins, but blue guy’s staff doesn’t work on Dicer and the thugs’ superior numbers soon wear down the other two ninjas. All seems lost…until the red guy shows up to make a timely rescue, taking down the bad guys with his CD throwing stars.

Except for the femme fatale. She bats aside their projectiles with her whip, but she runs for her life when the orange guy uses the ancient ninja art of turning girls off.

Dicer breaks the blue guy’s staff, who flashes back to his mom warning him that if he breaks he’s ground, Grounded, GROUNDED!!! This proves to be his Super Saiyan moment, and his hair goes neon blue.

When Dicer refuses to surrender even in the face of this corny special effect, the blue guy shoots an energy ball at him that turns Dicer into a fire extinguisher.

And yeah, that’s pretty much it. They save May and we cruise out to the strains of Vanilla Ice’s “Ninja Rap”.

Watch the silly spectacle yourself here.

Return of the Ghostbusters

Three years after a new generation of Ghostbusters saved Denver from Freddy Krueger’s bladed glove, they’re still riding high on their fame as local heroes. Eugene died in a webcomic midquel and was replaced by Pavel Karnov. And like so many sequels, the magic Girlfriend Delete Button has been pressed so Neil can have a brand new romantic subplot.

Luckily for him, hot twentysomething reporter April Hunter is assigned to do an expose on the Ghostbusters, even though she’d rather be doing a report on a load of Egyptian artifacts discovered by Klaus Konstantin. The centerpiece of which is the Amulet of Anubis, which gives someone who knows how to use it all kinds of unholy powers.

Pavel used to be Konstantin’s assistant, and doesn’t think the guy can be trusted. Before long his suspicions are confirmed when Konstantin unleashes the amulet’s powers, and only the Ghostbusters can save the day.

Freddy vs. Ghostbusters was a fluffy movie that wouldn’t make you think, and even the real movies didn’t get too caught up in the particulars of what exactly the guys did. Return’s problem is it does want you to think, but isn’t sure how to deal with the consequences. It’s mentioned that people are starting to ask themselves where these cowboys with atomic backpacks get off cramming people’s souls into boxes. Insofar as the movie gives any answer at all, it seems to boil down to “If supernatural forces are threatening to destroy the world those same people are the only ones who can do anything about it. And if somebody's not paying them to imprison ghosts in their basement forever they can't afford to save us. So shut up.”

Conquering...I mean, saving the world! With SCIENCE!!

In fact, for something that calls itself a Ghostbusters movie, Return takes itself awfully seriously. Konstantin needs human souls to activate the amulet, but he doesn’t use ghosts. He steals a ghost trap and goes around sucking the souls out of living people, leaving a trail of lifeless bodies in his wake. Compare that to what they were trying to save the world from in the movie: a cartoon junk food mascot. Compare that to how Vigo was defeated in the sequel: the power of song. What jokes there are amount to things like “Listen to that! Ed’s ringtone is the Legend of Zelda music!”

All told, Return feels a lot more like a general action movie than a Ghostbusters film. It’s about three times as long as its predecessor and actually had an appreciable budget considering what kind of movie it is. The ghosts are more numerous, and the scenes showing Denver overrun by a legion of spooks are pretty good. Yet it also drags at times, the actors lack chemistry, and as mentioned it brings up questions it isn’t prepared to answer. And being three times as long as the battle with Freddy, it doesn’t have the luxury of having run its course before any questions the viewer has have the chance to sink in. Like, why does Konstantin want to make April his queen when he takes over the world? That was cliché when our parents were kids. Maybe it was explained in a cut scene, but then why was the pointless bar fight scene not cut down? Did they have some kind of deal with the owner?

I don't want to imply I hate this movie or went into it expecting the same things I do of a multi-million dollar film. It was a movie made by people who love Ghostbusters because they love Ghostbusters. I find that pretty admirable in and of itself, and they did a better job of making a supernatural action movie than I probably could've. But if the Denver Ghostbusters return again, please remember Ghostbusters is a horror-COMEDY.

It was this foul-mouthed game critic.

Freddy vs Ghostbusters

Everybody’s seen Ghostbusters, the smash hit horror/comedy about a group of half-cocked spook exterminators who face their ultimate test when an evil god descends on New York, so let’s not waste any time explaining that.

Back in 2004 Braxtanfilm, a teeny tiny filmmaking group that gets its stuff out there via the internet, released Freddy vs. Ghostbusters, a “movie” pitting (who else?) spectral serial killer Freddy Krueger, menace of the seminal A Nightmare on Elm Street series, against…not the Ghostbusters, but some Ghostbusters.

Neil Anderson is attacked by Freddy in his dreams and his screams wake up his lazy, jobless roommate Chuck. Neil doesn’t have long to dwell on the conundrum of what’s worse: that his roommate is too lazy to do dishes or that said lazy roommate is going out with Nancy Ashton, the blonde bombshell Neil himself pines for. His friends Ed and Eugene are coming in from New York to investigate weird goings on in Denver.

Which they do by immediately hitting a bar. No, seriously, Eugene tells Ed to stop talking to homeless people so they can grab a brew. While Neil is unloading his roommate woes onto his friends, a green poltergiest appears and terrorizes the bar. Luckily Ed’s last name is Spengler and soon they’re proton-packing the ghost into a box and doing the same to ghosts all over Denver as fake magazine covers tell us how awesome it is to be a Ghostbuster.

Finally the trio get a break from catching spooks. While Eugene indulges in some Mega Man 2, Neil and Ed come to the realization that Freddy is haunting Neil’s mattress. It comes a little too late to save Chuck, who falls asleep in Neil’s bed because it’s the only clean spot in the apartment. They burn the mattress hoping to immolate Freddy with it, but only set the ghostly killer free so he can trap Nancy in his otherworldly home and lure the Ghostbusters into a fight on his home turf. Even with Subway spokesman Jared in their corner, do they stand a chance against the scourge of Elm Street?

Calling Freddy vs. Ghostbusters a “movie” is overselling it. The only characters with any depth are Neil’s loser roommate and Freddy, who’d had his development done across a slew of movies already. All the memorable music is recycled from the “real” movie, the only new track of note being a remix of the Ghostbusters theme song that plays over the familiar mid-movie montage of the team establishing their business. And if you’re thinking the name “Neil Anderson” lends itself to a stupid Matrix joke, well, so did the people who made this movie.

Take away every reason I have for wanting to go in why don't ya.

But you know what? That’s okay. As something that clocks in at just over thirty minutes counting credits, when actually watching Freddy vs. Ghostbusters it’s hard not to see it as anything more than an entertaining bit of fluff. Unlike some movies that just go on and on reminding you of their faults, it’s had its fun before its had a chance to wear out its welcome. It’s such a light piece that even the jokes that don’t get a laugh out of you aren’t likely to get anything worse than a “meh” before you move onto the next thing. Even the Matrix joke (and believe me, after my stint at Blockbuster I’ll never, ever laugh at another Matrix joke). Not surprising considering the movie allegedly began life as nothing but a standalone action sequence.

If you heard about Freddy vs. Ghostbusters you may have also heard Braxtanfilm released a sequel a few years later. One that managed to attract a cameo from a certain foul-mouthed game critic…

Only in his dreams.

So it’s a fun movie that’s kinda short and won’t make you think, but the people who make the actual Ghostbusters movies saw fit to give it a nod in last year’s videogame. That’s a pretty hefty recommendation right there.