Warriors of Virtue

I remember when I was a kid; I saw commercials for a 1997 movie, “Warriors of Virtue.” It looked like a great film about a kid who travels to another world and meets kangaroos who know martial arts. I didn’t get to see it in theaters, but we did rent it from the library when it was released on VHS. When I saw it, I had liked it, but when I got older and saw parts of the movie again, I was so bored by it. Even after seeing The Nostalgia Critic’s review of the movie and the clips that he had used I was getting bored by them. So what makes this film painfully dull, well, let’s find out. Hopefully you don’t fall asleep reading this.

First off, this film gets its viewers confused as to what kind of a movie it is. Is it a fantasy movie, a family movie, or a sports movie? Because the scenes change so fast that you don’t even know what kind of a movie you are watching. And the comics you see being read by the main character Ryan Jeffers, played by Mario Yedida, looks more like the storyboards for the movie. Seriously, this would be an insult to comic books, and fans could go on rants about that part. Apparently he has a disabled leg, which makes him the towel boy for his middle school’s football team. He can’t play football, but he does give the players advice on how to play. After the game, they invite him over to a sewer line, and he is so gullible that he decides to go there. Look kid, these kids are trying to trick you into becoming one of them. Can’t you see that? But then again, middle school kids do hang out with the wrong crowd, which I can say from personal experience. Even Ryan’s friend, Chucky, played by Ricky D'Shon Collins, can see that this is a trap.

Ryan is apparently friends with the owner of his favorite Chinese restaurant, played by Dennis Dun, who tells him to imagine a world where warriors use the elements to fight. Sounds like a cool place to be if the movie would hurry up and take us there. What’s with all this other stuff? Where are the martial arts kangaroos? Also, the manuscript that the owner gives Ryan is supposed to be of Tao. Oh, I forgot to mention, the T in Tao is pronounced with a D sound, NOT A T! If you are Chinese, you should know that! It’s alright if they mispronounce it maybe once or twice, but they keep mispronouncing it over and over and over again. Dimwits!

After about 20 minutes, we finally get the kid transported to the Land of Tao. How does he get there? Well, the football team’s quarterback, Brad, played by Michael Dubrow, tells Ryan to cross a steel beam in order to spray paint on the wall, but the sewer water comes in and drains him down a whirlpool. When he wakes up, he is in the Land of Tao and he finds that his leg is miraculously healed. He’s attacked, loses the manuscript, meets up with a dwarf named Mudlap (Michael J. Anderson), who takes him to Elysia (the beautiful Marley Shelton), who takes him to see Master Chung (Chao-Li Chi). You could say he is like Mr. Miyagi, but not anywhere close to being like him.

Master Chung then “finally” takes him to see the Warriors of Virtue who wield the elemental powers. Lai: Warrior of Wood (Virtue of Loyalty) (Don W. Lewis, voiced by Dale Wilson), Chi: Warrior of Fire (Virtue of Wisdom) (J. Todd Adams, voiced by Doug Parker), Tsun: Warrior of Earth (Virtue of Integrity) (Adrienne Corcoran, voiced by Kathleen Barr), and Yee: Warrior of Metal (Virtue of Righteousness) (Doug Jones, voiced by Doug Parker). One of them is no longer with the group, and that is Yun: Warrior of Water (Virtue of Benevolence) (Jake Tate, voiced by Scott McNeil) because he killed someone, but does return to the group. When you see these five together, you will instantly think Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles rip-offs. Only they are Marsupials instead of Turtles.

Like all bad movies, all of the good parts were only put in the trailers. The rest of the movie has our heroes sitting around a fire talking about what they need to do. Where’s all of the action that you are promising us? This is what the movie is going to do? Just talk us to boredom until we fall asleep and wake up not knowing what happened? Seriously, give us some action! This film's running time is around the 90 minute mark, but a lot of it is boring us to death with all this camp fire talk. Oh we do have action, but they are all filmed in that blurry vision that you don’t even know what’s going on. Even the last fight has the best action, and that is shot in that darn annoying blurry vision.

The one enjoyable factor of this film is the over-the-top villain Komodo, played by Angus MacFayden. He’s just a joy to watch because of how much overacting he does. You might even remember MacFayden from such well-known roles in other films like “Titus” and “Braveheart.” I would say he was given bad direction than him having a bad acting coach for this film.

Also when Ryan reads the manuscript, it says, “Five is one, Positive Kung. To take a life, you lose a part of yourself.” What kind of a saying is that in a manuscript? They have to combine their medallions, and when they say their elements, I’m expecting Captain Planet to come out.

Bottom line: avoid this movie, unless you want to be bored to tears. It is that underwhelming. You would think that they would have learned from this and not take this any further right? Well, much to their everlasting shame, they made a direct-to-video sequel in 2002. That one I will review this Friday, so stay tuned, even though I know everyone doesn’t want to. I know for a fact that I don’t.