3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain

Things are in a pretty sad situation when former professional wrestler and host of American Gladiators, Hulk Hogan, gives the movie’s most emotive performance. He does just that, in “3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain,” released in 1998, playing the role of Dave Dragon, an action hero from a television sitcom that just got canceled. Dave, whose hair line is receding and is embarrassed to be seen by his fans wearing red stretch pants, is performing for the last time at Mega Mountain, an amusement park, where evil ninjas take over the park and threaten the owner of the park (Pat Mahoney) to give Medusa (Loni Anderson) $10 million or else the park will be blown to kingdom come.

Luckily the three ninja brothers are at the park as well. Rocky (Matthew Botuchis), Colt (Michael O'Laskey II) and Tum Tum (James Paul Roeske II) have been dropped off at the park by their parents (Alan McRae and Margarita Franco) and are left to celebrate Tum Tum’s birthday there.

Since the boys have been trained by their Grandfather Mori (Victor Wang), you can be certain that the bad guys will not be able to escape. Even Tum Tum will be able to take on guys half his size.

There are gunfights, physical fights on top of roller coasters, dart attacks, and a SWAT team that can’t figure out how to get through an electric fence! Why is that? In the end, Medusa, the leader of the villains, forcefully tells the brothers “your training is far superior to my warriors.” Lady, wasn’t that the whole point?

Obviously the brothers would not be so cool if they didn’t learn a few valuable lessons.

They wouldn’t have been able to take on everyone without Dave, who tells the brothers, “Real heroes know when to play it cool,” or without their new neighbor who also happens to be a computer genius, Amanda, played by Chelsey Earlywine.

Anita Gates of the New York Times said in her review, “For most moviegoers over 12, this, the fourth ''Three Ninjas'' movie, will be interminably boring. But it's possible that young children will enjoy the film, since it falls into both the action category and the children-are-smart-adults-can't-do-anything-right genre.”

The amusement park workers are stupid since they basically fell for Medusa as a nun even though she is wearing pounds of makeup and dangling earrings.

Do yourself a favor, and avoid this entire series because they just got worse and worse with every single film. The biggest slap in the face for moviegoers is that the late Jim Varney, who you might remember as playing Ernest P. Worrell, is in here playing Medusa’s right hand man. Now that is a shame.

Phew, what a relief. It’s a good thing I’m done with this horrible series. At least I am done with this series, and now I’m happy.

Thank you for joining in on my reviews this month and…wait a minute. Next month is October! You know what that means!? HALLOWEEN MONTH!!!! Are you looking forward to it, because I sure am. See you all then.