Runtime: 95 minutes
Directed by: John Turteltaub
Starring: Victor Wong, Professor Toru Tanaka, and a bunch of random actors
From: Touchstone Pictures
Yes, this was a movie from my childhood. Me and my sisters (excuse me, my sisters and I) viewed this as kids. I don’t know about them but me, it hadn’t been viewed in probably 3 full decades. Randomly discovering its presence on Prime last night and it leaving the free for Prime members tier after Friday meant that there was general curiosity over how I’d think of this as an adult.
Technically, the movie isn’t that great in terms of acting, plot, characters, logic, etc. As neat as it is that Victor Wong was the lead, imagining a pudgy senior citizen as a ninja badass who trains his kid grandsons in that art strains credulity. There is an OBVIOUS body double used when Wong kicks ass. The plot is nonsense: the father of the boys is an FBI agent and their grandfather used to work for a villain “who loves being a bad guy,” (an actual line of dialogue) their dad is after… then there are a trio of surfer dudes who attempt to kidnap the boys, and there’s no shortage of dumb moments, not to mention some that have questionable implications.
3 Ninjas is dopey and made for children of the time; there were some chuckles and the action wasn’t bad. It’s just that there’s an extended setpiece blatantly aping Home Alone where the three Jeff Spicoli dudes get wrecked through the house via various props, including Ex-Lax. If you want to see little boys beat up stoners, white dudes as cosplay ninjas, and pro wrestler turned actor Professor Toru Tanaka… some of the acting was also suspect, to state it kindly. The lead heel is literally some random dude whose acting style was best described as “canned ham!”
Still, perhaps it is nostalgia but 3 Ninjas was not something I hated. The sequels were never viewed; my sisters saw the first sequel & hated it; that’s why I never bothered. Scuttlebutt says that the last entry (High Noon at Mega Mountain) is awesomely bad. There is a curiosity factor… Hulk Hogan w/ bad hairpiece, Jim Varney, and Loni Anderson… perhaps one day.
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