'Cheerleader Ninjas' Review

Any movie with the word "Cheerleader" in the title is bound to have three things: bare breasts, bad acting, and a dumb excuse of a plot to put a bunch of young blonde actresses in short skirts. Cheerleader Ninjas delivers on all three points, and goes on to prove that the gratuitous use of body doubles, cheesy sound effects, blow up dolls, and fart jokes can enhance a movie. The filmmakers here were clearly shooting for a "so-bad-it's-good" angle, and they pull it off with amazing results. This is one of the funniest B-movies we've ever seen, and almost all of the humor was intentional.

The story is of course, pure nonsense. A group known as "The Catholic Mothers With Too Much Time on Our Hands", angry at a website featuring pictures of a local cheerleading team, hire a gay teacher and a bunch of "teenage prostitutes" to teach the cheerleaders at the rival high school a lesson. Fortunately, the "innocent" cheerleaders learn kung-fu and are able to fend off the Catholics. However, an even deeper conspiracy emerges that threatens to destroy the world as we know it. As the DVD Case puts it, an evil mastermind named Mr. X is using the cheerleaders to test his "Internet Zombie Domination Software". Any movie with Internet Zombie Domination Software has to be worth a rental.

Much of the movie's humor is centered around a group of nerds who wear Star Trek uniforms and are constantly seated in front of their aging Pentium-era laptops. The nerds and the cheerleaders form a shaky alliance and friendship in order to thwart Mr. X and his allies. The extremely stereotypical portrayal of the nerds plays well against the similar portrayal of the "good" cheerleaders. Maybe I just have a very low-brow sense of humor, but I laughed at just about every joke in the movie. The only thing I didn't enjoy was the fight scene between two giant robots, with sex toys being used as weapons. That scene felt entirely unnecessary and far too long, but I suppose some would say the same about the rest of the movie.

The acting here certainly isn't anything special, but it's good enough to keep the movie from being a painful watch. Most of the performances are way over the top, especially from the nerds. The actors are all no-names, with only one or two having appeared in anything else. The only exception to that was adult film star Kira Reed. The movie's website and box promote the hell out of her appearance in this film, but she really doesn't have that big a part. In fact, she doesn't even have a character in the film. She just appears in a few nerd fantasies, and pinch-hits for the other actresses during topless scenes. All the hype around her participation in the film is probably an attempt to get some people familiar with her to watch something they normally wouldn't watch. God only knows why Reed appeared in the film at all.

The biggest disappointment of Cheerleader Ninjas is the extremely poor video quality. Granted, this is a low-budget independent film, but for 2002 this kind of quality is a real problem. The colors are somewhat dull, and the picture is just overall not very sharp, especially on the 50" LCD we watched this movie on. Fortunately, the audio quality is decent. It's just a stereo mix, but sounds nice and clear. I'd comment on the music, but there is no music to speak of.

Cheerleader Ninjas certainly isn't for everyone, but if you enjoy the juvenile sort of humor found in movies like Porky's, you might just be surprised with this one. Our final score:

Stats & Info
Rating: Rated R for strong sexual content, nudity, language and crude humor.
Rarity: Common
Genre: Comedy
Released: 2002
Country of Origin: USA
Video: Color; Widescreen (1.85:1)
Audio: English (Stereo)
Plot: Cheerleaders battle naughty catholic schoolgirls and Internet Zombie Domination Software.
How Bad Is It? - Fight scenes and fantasies involving blow up dolls, intentionally bad effects/acting/dialogue, poor video quality,