The Eight Rangers

Tsutsumi goes a little crazy. He's a peculiar director with a rich oeuvre, but it's not always easy to predict what he's going to come up with next. The Eight Rangers is a parody on popular Japanese sentai series (think Power Rangers) that comes off a little childish, but is actually quite fun.

A group of eight rejects come together and form a team of masked rangers, trying to stand up for themselves. They'll quickly learn that there's more to it than just just putting on a colored suit though, as their first attempts to fight crime don't end too well. But of course, as time passes, they learn to back each other and fend off the enemies that threaten them.

Don't come into this film hoping to see a real sentai flick, Tsutsumi plays it for laughs, turning it into a full-blown comedy. The performances are decent, the gags are quite funny and the pacing is solid. It's not an outstanding flick, it's a bit too cheap for that, but it's good fun, especially for people familiar with the sentai shows it parodies.