Humpday Horribleness: ‘Pocket Ninjas’

One of the great features over at the Internet Movie Database is the Bottom 100. Based on ratings viewers of the site give to various films, the worst of the worst films get put on this list. Some of them are on and off in a matter of days. Others stick around for the long haul, showing just how much suckage they truly emit.

It’s time to look at these movies and determine where they stand. Do they deserve to be on the Bottom 100 list? Are they not as bad as everyone says? Will they be off the list any time soon?

Here’s the breakdown for this week’s film:

Title: ‘Pocket Ninjas’

Release Date: March 25, 2007

Ranking on Bottom 100 (as of 8/12/2009): #1 (based on 700 votes)

Why it’s Here: Recently, while coming up with ideas for our weekly Top 10 Tuesday column, a Movie Geeks joked that we should come up with the list of Top 10 Hollywood chins.  He threw out names like Bruce Campbell, Willem Dafoe, Sienna Miller, and a few other notable mandibles.  However, I had an ace up my sleeve.  Amidst this back and forth of a non-alcoholic name game,  I whipped out the name of the one actor that trumped all others.  This man has a chin that can be seen by space.  I’m pretty sure if his chin were to ever appear in a movie theater, the gravitational pull would create a wormhole.  I’m talking about Robert Z’Dar.

Don’t know who I’m talking about?  How about now?

I think that tattoo used about a half a gallon of ink.  Then, while scouring the IMDB Bottom 100 to find what movie I should talk about this week, I came across the name ‘Pocket Ninjas.’  It stars Z’Dar.  It’s about a trio of pre-teen martial arts experts.  It’s at #1.  #1!!!  How could anything be so bad starring Robert Z’Dar that it deserves to be all the way up (or down, depending on how  you look at it) at the very top (or bottom) of the list?  I thought that, then I pushed play.  This movie is unwatchable.

Z’Dar stars as Cobra Khan, an evil gangster who can only be stopped by the White Dragon, played by kick-boxing champ, Gary Daniels.  After becoming injured during a battle with Khan, the White Dragon trains three of his black belt students.  Before you can say “‘Three Ninjas’ is getting ripped off” the kids are fighting crime and whooping some Cobra Khan ass.

Everything, EVERYTHING, about this movie is at an all-time low.  The acting can’t even be considered acting.  There are moments involving an evil kid (I didn’t bother to remember his name) where it literally seems like he was being fed one line at a time from some offscreen voice.  I would think that for real, but I’m sure it wasn’t in this film’s budget to go back in post and take the instructional voice out.  The fight choreography is horrendous with stunt coordination going to someone named Rick Rabago.  He also has a part in the film as Cubby Khan, though I’m not quite sure which character that was.

The music, the plot detailing, the pacing.  Everything seems to be pulled out of some, God-awful, ’80s movie trying to capitalize off of the popularity of Chuck Norris movies.  Unfortunately, ‘Pocket Ninjas’ was filmed in 1994.  Released in 1997, it is a movie that instantly hit the wall of being dated.   Awful and endless training montages, ridiculously choreographed fighting, and lamest of the lame in terms of humor, this movie has absolutely nothing interesting to offer.   Fortunately for the world, not that many people have seen it.  There’s a reason why director Dave Eddy only did one, other movie, a documentary about September 11 called ‘The Box.’  We won’t hold that movie against him, but we sure as hell will hold ‘Pocket Ninjas’ aganst him.

There are some movie that I watch for this column, and I wonder why they are on the Bottom 100 list.  A lot of these movies just get bad wraps, and people feel they have to slight them.  Then there are movies like ‘Pocket Ninjas,’ which not only deserves to be on this list, it genuinely deserves to be at this #1 spot.

Lowest of the Low Moments: As with most of these movies we talk about, there are many moments that could be construed as “lowest of the lows.”  With ‘Pocket Ninjas,’ it comes down to two moments.  One is a throwaway scene.  While criminals are terrorizing the streets of the city, one thug lures a helpless girl into a nest of other thugs by pulling on a piece of paper with fishing line.  She has a rod and reel and is standing behind some bushes.  The helpless girl, who deserves to get beat up by goons, slowly walks after the piece of paper (it might be a pamphlet of some kind, though it eludes me why she gives a damn about it) bent over in a faint effort to pick it up.  Really awful.

However, as bad as this is, it really can’t hold a candle to the central fight scene.  It involves Cobra Khan and White Dragon, and it takes place at a carnival.  Think you know where this is going?  Think again.   Everyone involved in this movie, I believe, thought they were making comedy gold, but this fight proves they were wrong.   Z’Dar and Gary Daniels bouncing up and down on balloons is one thing.   Watching them play patty-cake is another entirely.   There isn’t even much fighting in this “fight” scene.

See for yourself:

Will it Ever Get Off the List: It’s all the way at the bottom of the bottom list.   Granted, only 700 people have seen it, but that number isn’t looking to explode anytime soon.   Even if it does, the more people who see this, the more 1s out of 10 this movie is going to get.   There is no way, NO WAY, this movie is ever going to get off the Bottom 100 list, and it shouldn’t.

It is absolutley one of the worst pieces of movie making I have ever had to force myself to watch.   Even then, and I’ll be perfectly honest with you, I found myself doing anything else during the last half of the movie.   That includes dusting my computer and alphabetizing my book shelves.   If you’re ever with your buddies, and you are debating on what to watch to subject yourselves to the worst movie known to man, look no further than ‘Pocket Ninjas.’