3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain (1998)

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

As a huge fan of the 3 Ninjas, I can safely say that this movie is horrible. And yes, this is coming from a fan of movies where kids successfully beat up adults. I know this is a kids movie, but this is just plain silly.The plot is that it's Tum Tum's birthday, and he's going to have his party at Mega Mountain (the one and only!) Just in the nick of time, a geeky girl moves in next door. How convenient. Tum's birthday party is on the same day as the final appearance of his favorite TV hero, Dave Dragon, played by the Hulkster (brother!) Well, he got lucky. There also happen to be terrorists who want to, get this, take over the amusement park. See? That's just plain silly. So, since the 3 Ninjas are there, they break out their ninja skills and save the day with the Davester.I remember this being my favorite 3 Ninjas movie. I totally regret making this decision, and I don't even know why it used to be my favorite. It feels like they tried to get everything wrong here, but with that, it makes the movie fun to watch. There's always something to make fun of, like the laughable special effects, horrendous dialog, and Hulk Hogan's hamming it up! (Seriously, how can you NOT laugh at "One ninja stew coming up!")

The only reason I bought this DVD is because I'm such a fan of Varney's. I wouldn't have known about this movie much less get it if he wasn't in it. While lots of people rag on Hulk Hogan, he wasn't the worst actor. By far, the most wooden performance goes to Loni Anderson. If this is a family oriented movie, why in the world did they have her dress in that skanky leather outfit that was far too short? Terrible casting as far as Loni goes. She was supposed to be the evil Medusa but I didn't buy it. She just didn't have the quality of pulling off the 'bad guy' type of role. She was much better on 'WKRP in Cinncinati'. I got a little tired of Tum Tum's 'Ay-yahs' after a while. They were too high pitched and over done. All 6 stars go to Jim Varney. I was actually rooting for Lothar to become successful in his mission for he was the only one of the bad guys with the brilliance to pull off the heist. He easily outshone all the stars, as usual. He always gives 100% to whatever role he played as you can see here. Jim and Victor were the two best actors in this movie. Maybe if Jim had cast and directed this, it would've been a bigger box office success. The man was a brilliant actor and a genius. If you're a fan of Varney's, then yes, get the movie just to watch him. Otherwise, don't bother.

I don't know if I can add to what others have said about this movie's crappy-ness. They really cut corners on this one: For example, in the first movie, the kids seem to be pretty good at this karate stuff. You have to kind of suspend your disbelief when the youngest attacks anyone, because you can just see him getting picked up by the scruff of the neck and hung up to dry until the fight is over. But it's a kids' film so that's not really a spoiler. And there is a lot of "Home Alone"-type stealth-fighting on the kids' side to help even things out. At the time, I saw the original actors from "3 Ninjas" on the "Tonight Show" and they seemed to really know karate, and were pretty charming for kid actors.By contrast, in this last abomination, you can see in the fight scenes that there is no contact, and frequently there is cheap, obvious, camera speeding up to make it look like a real fight, not choreography. The littlest one, who is even younger than he was in any of the other movies, (there are all new actors for the kids in this movie, a big mistake, and what's up with the mullet/ponytail on Colt? Even knowing karate he's going to get his ass kicked with that haircut! I'm gay but that look's too faggy for me. I mean, really! Butch it up a little, will ya?) In a good kids' movie there is something for the adults, too. But this movie doesn't really have much for the kids. Bad acting by Hulk Hogan and the kids, bad, bad, bad writing and directing, the earlier mentioned fake fight scenes (maybe these kids could take on an adult who didn't know karate, but for them to beat an adult NINJA, just because they have been trained by a cliché-spouting grandfather, and have an FBI agent father? I don't think so. And amusement park rides aren't designed so they can be stopped upside-down and remotely release the passengers, which is the so-called terrorists plan. It's called safety engineering, meaning, there is no situation where you would WANT to be able to do that, so you don't design your system to BE ABLE TO DO THAT! Of course, then you don't have a movie, if you can't do that. Of course, you would have to GET CLEVERER WRITERS! There's a few good lines from Loni Anderson and Jim Varney, although they both come across as somewhat incompetent. Can't have real, know-your-stuff terrorists around to scare the kiddies, now, can we? Guess not.As it happened, this movie came to North Carolina Cable TV around the same time I saw my first episode of the Middleman TV series, which happened to be the one about aliens hiding on earth disguised as people addicted to plastic surgery. When I first saw Loni Anderson, with her artificially plumped lips, probable-cheek-implants, probable-face-lift, probable-Botox, probable-etc., I first thought she had the same makeup as the aliens did in the Middleman episode. Then I realized that this was how she really looked. Scary. Probably too scary for a kids' movie. I know it was for me and I'm near 50.Summary: For a good karate movie, see the first "3 Ninjas" movie, or possibly the next two. Skip this bomb. Also the "Karate Kid" is good, esp. the first one (see a pattern here?) Someone tried to squeeze the last dime out of the "3 Ninjas" franchise; hopefully it is completely dead now. You know how these things can come back to life in Hollywood... (cue scary music...)

1st watched 4/6/2008 - 4 out of 10(Dir-Sean McNamara): Harmless fluff, but poorly done at times. In this 3 Ninjas entry, the guys are spending time at their favorite amusement park for Tum Tum's birthday. A group of bad ninjas just happen to be attempting to take over the park for a ransom while they are there. The bad guys are led by Madusa(played by Loni Anderson) and assisted by a rare non-comic Jim Varney, who actually does a pretty good job as a villain. The movie starts with the 3 hero's doing a pretty cool obstacle course at their grandfather's place but learn a valuable lesson when he turns off the power and then makes them attempt it backwards. The lesson they learned, supposedly, is not to get a big head because they aced it going forwards but couldn't cut it backwards without power(believe it or not!!). This is later used by the guys in the final showdown with the baddies, which kind of brings their lesson back to them and creates kind of a purpose for their grandfather's teachings. I won't let you know what happens the 2nd time, in case you want to watch the movie yourself, but you can probably guess. This predictability, some obvious mistakes in the production(boom mikes and wires being visible) and the low acting expectations from most make this attempt at a fun kids movie even dismal to most kids, probably.