Surf Ninjas (Film Review)

1993 New Line Cinema
Directed by: Neal Israel; Written by: Dan Gordan and Neal Israel
Starring: Ernie Reyes Jr., Rob Schneider, Tone Lōc, John Karlen, Ernie Reyes Sr., and Leslie Nielsen
MPAA Rating: PG; Running Time: 87 Minutes
The Nicsperiment Score: 4/10

Johnny and Adam are living the early 90's L.A. teenager life, surfing their cares away, when their adopted father isn't forcing them to go to school, or when their dopey older friend, Iggy, isn't crashing their pad...until one day, WHEN NINJAS ATTACK and their father is kidnapped. The boys are suddenly defended by a mysterious, one-eyed ninja, who tells Johnny that Johnny is actually the deposed prince of the island kingdom of Patusan. An evil dictator apparently took over the island years ago, forcing the young Johnny and Adam into exile. Now it's time for these young surf ninjas to take back their homeland...because it's the 90's.
Surf Ninjas is stupid as a surfing ninja, but if you're willing to look past that stupidity for a minute, there's a fairly fun 1993 capsule buried beneath this idiotic dirt. As the almost ever-smiling Johnny, Ernie Reyes Jr. is engaging and hard not to like, and he pretty effortlessly carries the film. Rob Schneider does his "I'm a moron" schtick here as well as he does it anywhere else, though his dialogue is just about as bad as it gets. Speaking of bad, Leslie Nielsen is horribly miscast as Patusan's mask-wearing villain, in a strangely unfunny performance that's almost an art in non-existence. On the other hand, Reyes Jr.'s own father brings some upbeat energy to the one-eyed ninja role, and Tone Lōc is a lot of fun as the wisecracking L.A. cop who tags along on the adventure. Nothing here is necessarily good, and some things here are quite necessarily bad, but there's an entire side-plot where the younger brother, Adam, predicts the movie's future events by playing the film's movie tie-in Game Gear game ONSCREEN. Between that and the sunny, goofy aesthetics, along with an enjoyable performance by a young Kelly Hu, this just feels so incredibly 90's that it almost doesn't even matter how bad it is. Surf Ninjas is 87 minutes of dumb-dumb 90's fare, and there are certainly worse things to spend you time with than that.