I know that ninjas are a huge part of bad movie folklore, not to mention the fact that they've kept the Asian film market (and Godfrey Ho) in business a long time. They're swift, they're silent, they're deadly and by the time you see a ninja, you're already dead.
And yet with the advent of 3 Ninjas, none of the regular rules of ninjas apply, because this movie was made for kids.
Colorful costumes, most every scene is shot in broad daylight and every adult in this film is a clod. How could it NOT be for kids? (okay, those same attributes still hold true for a Godfrey Ho movie, too, but anyway...)
John Hughes could have wrote this, and I'm surprised that he didn't. But I guess after writing 101 Dalmatians (1996) and Baby's Day Out, even he figured that he'd plateaued. And if there's any worse indictment I can make against 3 Ninjas, it's in its plot.
So here goes: Every year, young brothers Samuel (Michael Treanor), Jeffrey (Max Elliott Slade) and Michael (Chad Power) visit their Japanese grandfather, Mori Shintaro (Victor Wong), whom the boys affectionately refer to as Grandpa (for some odd reason) for the summer. Mori is skilled in the fields of Martial Arts and Ninjutsu, and has trained the boys in every technique he knows. He even gives them outstanding ninja names like Rocky, Colt and Tum-Tum, respectively.
The boys' father (Alan McRae) is an FBI officer and, after an organized crime ring headed by Hugo Snyder (Rand Kingsley) proves to be too much for the Bureau, Snyder makes things worse by attempting to kidnap the three boys - by using three bumbling kidnappers/surfers/idiots who are usually getting battered and beaten in various embarrassing ways - until it all culminates in a final battle where ninjas battle young ninjas and armed officers. Oh, and there's time for a basketball game and a young girlfriend (Kate Sargeant), and more than one Home Alone reference.
See what I mean? Director Jon Turteltaub, who would become one of Disney Pictures' most reliable directors (good/bad thing) gives us a world in which the safety of humanity not only rests on the shoulders of grade school kids, but grade school kids named after a horse, a boxer and Asian antacid tablets, sounds like. This looks like a bad episode of a Nickelodeon series where you halfway expect The Wiggles to show up halfway through as hitmen.
Writers Edward Emanuel and Kenny Kim didn't really do much else in their "careers", except for Emanuel producing a video documentary called Pearl Harbor: A Day Of Infamy. Of course. Natural progression, you know.
I don't care who you are, how old you are or how much you enjoy ninjas no matter what the movie, there are some instances when a movie just should NOT have the word "ninja" in its title. Looking at my own personal collection here by my desk, I own The Ninja Squad, Ninja Terminator, Zombie Vs. Ninja and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret Of The Ooze. So yeah, I have...different tastes.
But even I have my limits when it comes to what I will accept ninjas in. Yes, I'll even accept movies where the ninjas in question have headbands with "NINJA" written on them. 3 Ninjas, however, would be hard for me to accept even if I was the 8-10 year old demographic this flick was aiming for.
And the worst part: this movie has Victor Wong in it! Victor Wong! Egg Shen himself! A man whose career had some pretty high highs in films like Big Trouble In Little China, The Golden Child, The Last Emperor, Tremors and The Joy Luck Club. That expressive face, the gravelly voice, the sense that if you crossed him, he could summon a whole horde of Asian demons on you. Victor deserved better than to have the last film role he would be remembered for was having played the same role as here in 3 Ninjas: High Noon At Mega Mountain (1998). Not an award-winning prestige film. Not a Japanese character study. A movie where lead roles went to Hulk Hogan and Jim Varney. At least this film gave him a chance to kick butt.
Speaking of butts getting kicked, the three aforementioned bumbling kidnappers/surfers/idiots named Fester (Patrick Labyorteaux), Marcus (Race Nelson) and Hammer (D.J. Harder) have the unfortunate luck to all three channel Daniel Stern after getting hit in the face with four bricks by Kevin McAllister.
All these three dull-witted buffoons do is serve as comedy relief in a movie that's already overloaded with it. Plenty of "dude"s and "bummer"s and "radical"s are uttered in the course of their appearance, as well as a lot of "ow"s and "ouch"es, seeing as all they do accomplish is share a similar amount of concussions, as served by the three title brats. When a movie tries to echo the slapstick violence of Home Alone and can't even reach THAT level of shtick, that's a movie which has not learned well, Grasshopper.
As far as the triple threat of mini-martial artists go, we are saddled with three of the most untalented tow-headed punks since the last live-action Walt Disney kids' film went direct-to-video. These kids' entire personalities are summed up in their nicknames. Treanor's Rocky likes to be all tough, Slade's Colt acts skittish and Power's Tum Tum...eats. That's it. At what time did stuffing your face every time the camera was on you become a character trait in Hollywood? Long before John Belushi made it an art form in National Lampoon's Animal House, I'm sure.
Other than representing their namesakes, all that these kids do is recite ninja analogies, scream out lame catch phrases ("Let's light this big guy up!") and martial-art any bad guy in their immediate range into submission. One scene in which Rocky is trying to talk on the phone with a cute girl named Emily and Colt and Tum Tum dance around and chant "Ro-cky LOVES! E-mi-LEE!" was so painful I'm pretty sure I popped more than one Advil the first time I saw it.
The adults, as is par for the course, fare little better. The only thing evil nasty bad guy Snyder gets to do is sneer, threaten and occasionally hit a guy or two. Not that I expect Auric Goldfinger in a kiddie film, but this guy would be more threatening dressed in a Chuck E. Cheese costume. Jerks who double-park their Audis in the handicapped space are more threatening than this clown.
Not even the efforts of the legendary Professor Toru Tanaka provide any entertainment. Forever cast as the Oddjob-wannabe in more movies than this one, Tanaka doesn't even get to do anything suitably evil; just follow boss Snyder around until unleashed...not that he gets unleashed much as it is. Come on, though: this is the man who was in movies with Chuck Norris AND Arnold Schwarzenegger! Who wants to see him get beat up by kids???
I won't mention the boys' parents, only to say that they get involved with their kids' lives to the extent that Charlie Brown's folks get involved with his. Thanks, kiddie flick; that's just the message I wanted to hear - Parents shouldn't get involved with their kids' lives until it becomes a life or death situation.
Understandably, 3 Ninjas was a hit with kids. NOT understandably, it also became a sleeper hit, earning back $29 million on a $2.5 million budget. Which only goes to show that people weren't only starved for entertainment back in 1992, they were literally chewing their own legs off to escape the bear trap of such reprehensible films as Unforgiven and Scent Of A Woman, not to mention such detrimental kids' fare as Home Alone II: Lost In New York (co-inky-dink!) and Beethoven. That's ironic commentary for you.
Three sequels down the road and a personnel change here and there, this was a franchise that went about its business of getting money for its distributors (Touchstone Pictures) then subsiding to make way for the next big thing in children's entertainment, whatever flavor it would be that week. The thing with 3 Ninjas is, if the only thing it reinforced was the world view that adults are stupid and all kids should learn deadly ninja skills and fortune cookie philosophy, we as a race might as well wander into the ocean and let the dolphins take over.
One thing I noticed about 3 Ninjas is that it was released to different countries at different times. United States first, of course, then Spain, Argentina, Denmark, the United Kingdom and so forth. You want to know who the last country was to get hold of this movie? Japan. Three years after its initial release.
I would have LOVED to have been there for that premiere party. Moreso than Victor Wong would have, I'm sure.
