They keep making movies of old tv shows. Either for lack of other inspiration or, more likely, for an easy retro-nostalgic buck. They did Miami Vice, big movie, Michael Mann, wow. They did Starsky & Hutch, also big names, big money, shit films. So now they’ve re-booted CHiPs, which, OK, I kind’a watched every week without fail and rode my pretend Harley round the lounge wearing my mum’s sunglasses and had a man-crush on Erik Estrada’s smile, but it was definitely shit. But now, rather than turn cult-but-poor tv shows into crappy films, they’ve cut out the ‘cult’ requirement and gone for the worst ever show and sending it to the big screen. Power Rangers.

My girls, when very very young (I stress) luuuuuurved Power Rangers. Every Saturday morning, red-eyingly early in the morning, ‘we’ had to watch it. This is what happened. Every fucking week, without fail, deviation or anything that may have invoked the word ‘interesting’. Five schoolkids, boys’n’gels, one black one, one oriental (gotta be PC, this was 1995 or thereabouts) were in Maths class when suddenly a light went on upon someone’s belt. “Holy SHI- Holy Moly”, he/she would intone, depending on whose belt it was, obviously, “THE WORLD’S BEING INVADED BY ALIENS!!!!! And, fortunately for us, as we’re not in fact old enough to drive yet, they’ve chosen to invade just around the corner by the park, right in our back yard!!!!” The most convenient and considerate marauding aliens ever. Bless. And always the same. Men in ‘clay’ suits. Or ‘mud’ suits. Who crumbled when the Power Rangers… did whatever they did. Anything would work, so it appeared.

And now they’re back. Big screen, bit time, big lumps of disintegrating clay. Doesn’t get better than that. Or does it?????

They’ve made Yellow Ranger a lesbian. Just, ya know, for the kids. Sweet. Or perhaps she’s bisexual, as one critic proposed. So I’ll go with ‘gender neutral slut’ for the time being, just to avoid any possible ambiguity. And its never too soon to confuse kids over the whole sexuality issue.

I quite liked the old Yellow Ranger on tv. She was a ‘she’ and a rather fit one. Pink was quite nice too. The boys had the butch colours, black, green, red. No ambiguity back then. Yellow was my fave. Not that I dressed up like her or anything. No, my PR suit was red. Sorry, RED! The leader of the Power Rangers.

Onwards and upwards and beyond infinity and living long and prospering… they never had a tag-line. Show was too cheap to buy one. Maybe they’ll invent one for the movie.

Think I’ll give this film a miss

Happy Friday

A xxxx