Kindergarten Ninja (1994 Video) User Reviews

One star in the best possible way!

[andybelden · 1/10 · 16 April 2007]

My local video rental store is eliminating all of their VHS tapes and as I am still trapped in the 80s and do not have a DVD player I was more than happy to take some off their hands. #13 pick in choosing my 13 for $10 "Kindergarden 'Ninja'" has proved to be just as the others have said, the most entertaining use of a dollar you can find.

I hardly know where to begin. Lets start with the cover of the movie. It is important to note that the creators in no way intended you to think there were real martial arts in this film. Ninja in the title is in quotation as if to warn you of the fighting skills. The cover also declares "Say no to drugs!". That's what got me interested in this film, but the best part is inside.

At one part in the film Blade Steel (ex-NFL star Dwight Clark) suggests that he and his date go to Clark's on the Bay, Dwight Clark real life restaurant. As he says this the number to make a reservation at his his restaurant scrolls across the bottom of the screen. As they have their meal Steel goes on stage to sing the Motown "hit" "25 miles from home". while on stage his date is suddenly kidnapped by ninjas. while continuing to hold the mic and sing Steel defeats the ninjas and returns to the stage with a wink.

During the final fight scene Steel, his martial arts mentor and for a few brief seconds (used as a weapon) the kindergarten children fight a clan of drug dealing ninjas who throughout the film had been played by children but are now mysteriously grown men. During this action scene slow motion is actually filmed by the actors moving in slow motion. Simply amazing.

The entire film is packed full of gems like this.

I doubt you'll ever be able to find this film, but if you do, please pick it up. It will definitely be worth the dollar you spend.

don't get sucker-punched

[KDWms · 12 November 2003]

According to the IMDb, the length of this film is 82 minutes. That's 81 minutes too long. It should be only a 30-second P.S.A. for D.A.R.E.; and a 30-second message suggesting that adults listen more to kids. Besides these two topics, everything else is pure garbage. The movie is so named because an obnoxiously-successful football player is convicted of D.U.I., and his sentence is 90 days of being a teacher's aide. (Hmmm...I wonder if that's saying something right there?) His own martial arts learning is imparted at school, and the rest of the picture is about the students and him acquiring the skills and conditioning necessary to defend themselves against nefarious dope peddlers. The dialogue is mechanically recited, and the limited action is sickeningly staged. It has that tell-tale sound of a cheap production, and the effort to fill time (with two dangling tunes and by repeating certain video) is offensively blatant. How ironic that the main character's punishment is also ours.

Burn the Negatives!!!

[MetalMiike · 1/10 · 11 April 2005]

I saw this movie whilst working on a movie shoot. We had finished for the day and one of the actors insisted on showing us just how bad a movie can be. This is it folks. THIS is a piece of utter excrement THIS is the worst movie ever to be made and not in a fun ED WOOD way. Chan's direction is incomprehensibly poor. It's the sort that the worst, homemade porn movies would reject. We actually found it in a bargin dump bin in a market running as a double feature for £1.50! Yes 75p or about $1.00 a film. That's about 20 times what it must have taken to make this garbage. Presumably Chan approached the city council to make the film as part of the DARE anti-drugs programme so that he could get his first feature on his show reel. After seeing this, you'll probably need some drugs. You might even want to take a fatal overdose.

Type of movie that would be incinerated after failing to sell any copies in a 10p clearance bin

[the_pixie · 1/10 · 3 November 2007]

In his first directing role Anthony Chan gives us Kindergarten Ninja. An anti-drug (DARE) film that forces you to indulge in a vast array of mind-altering substances just to make it bearable. Kindergarten Ninja is the anthesis of a family movie; e.g. drug use, womanizing, violence. It's more like a comedy, one which you laugh at. The film has an unclassified rating (UN) as no sane person could probably sit through the entire coma-inducing mess. I suspect the review board simply deny its existence and see the whole premise as a joke on them and all Americans. It's important to remember that even though this is a US anti drugs film it was brought by a Hong Kong based distributor (Panorama Entertainment). God only knows what they saw in this diabolical mess, maybe cheap laughs at the expense of a nation.

OK, so what is Kindergarten Ninja about I hear you ask? Well, football "mega-star" Blade Steel (Dwight Clark) is sentenced to 90 days community service for being a drunken sex addict. What is Blade's punishment? Well, being the model citizen that he is, he's forced to tutor kids at his local community center. But Blade is bored, then suddenly a kung fu teaching angel; "Bruce" appears. He's tired of hanging out with Elvis and Charlie Chaplin in heaven so begins to teach Blade useless kung fu moves whilst sacrilegiously uttering memorable lines from movies such as Enter The Dragon. Blade then teaches the kids his kung poo, and that's about it - coupled with poorly staged fights along the way. The fights themselves look like they were choreographed by a mentally handicapped chimpanzee. Credit must also be given to the writer, George Chung (not to be confused with the famous 70s cocaine smuggler). A man who took all the worse parts of Kindergarten Cop, Hustler Squad, Young Dragons - The Kung Fu Kids, Bad News Bears, etc and made them significantly more unbearable.

Overall, Kindergarten Ninja feels like a low budget homemade porno. The poor camera quality, bad sound and womanizing lead actor, but no porn. Just 90 minutes of z-grade kung fu trash. Chan's lack of direction is shocking. I'm guessing he couldn't afford a boom mic so was forced to use the camera's inbuilt one. I really hope he doesn't direct another movie. Chan should stick to producing nauseating kiddy fodder like "Adventures with Kanga Roddy".

To conclude, I think that the purpose of movies is akin to music. Both enhance your life and provide entertainment. Having this in mind, Kindergarten Ninja cannot be classified as a movie. Words cannot describe how mind-numbingly banal and tedious it was. Having said this, I do have to congratulate Anthony Chan on making, possibly, the worst kung fu production I have ever seen. It's so bad it's bad.

what the hell???

[steven_alcock · 1/10 · 27 February 2006]

this film is so bad, there are adverts for local shops in it and it must have been filmed on a video camera.... ....its so bad its actually funny. There's a guy who is supposed to be Bruce lee, looks nothing like him, just is Asian..... It looks like they could not afford real actors so they used children as drug dealers.... I think its a production for a local community in America, how com i can buy it in pound land in the UK though!!!??? You have to see it to experience how rubbish it is, watch this film but don't pay anything more than a dollar, or pound or a euro... try and see if you can last till the movie ends...I couldn't the first time and missed the ending the second time, it now sits proudly with the rest of my DVD collection as it should with everyone, so you can say, I own the worst film eva made

It's a B movie, what do you expect?

[polarlove · 10/10 · 15 January 2006]

And, it's one of the funniest, most outrageous B-movies you'll ever see! I pity MetalMike for not finding the humor in this. Of course the acting is terrible and the plot deranged and the action scenes silly, but that's the humor in it. What's even funnier is that it may have been a serious attempt at making a decent movie. There are so many classic scenes it's so hard to know where to begin. The karaoke scene, the fight at the end, the three nearly identical montages and various points in the film, and the list goes on and on and on. This movie was far more entertaining than most of the crap put out by Hollywood. Again, if you can't find this funny, then I feel sorry for you... stop taking yourself so seriously! Jeez...

We guarantee you've never seen a movie like Kindergarten "Ninja" before.

[tarbosh22000 · 7/10 · 20 January 2014]

Blade Steel (Clark) is a man who lives up to his awesome name. A football star for the San Francisco "Gold Rush", he spends his time being an unrepentant womanizer and alcoholic. But he's living large, so no one seems to mind. That is, until he gets arrested on a DWI beef. Naturally, we then cut to heaven...yes, the heaven, where Charlie Chaplin and Elvis are just hanging around doing what they do. Apparently, in order for a Martial Artist named Bruce (surely not meant to make you think of anyone famous) to become an official angel, he must help a person in need. And that person is...you guessed it, a starving child in Africa. NO, of course it's Blade Steel. Meanwhile, Steel becomes a substitute teacher of sorts as part of his community service for his DWI. Because the tots are obsessed with the then-current game Street Fighter II, he decides to teach them all Martial Arts. But first he needs to learn it himself, so he takes classes with a blind master, named Master Chosen One (Chung). As if that wasn't enough, evil, Tony Montana-like drug-dealing bigshot Hector Machete (Chapa) is using the community center where Steel and the children are to run his drug operations. The new drug on the street is Buzz, imported from China, and Machete isn't happy that the Master, and Blade, are cleaning up the town of San Leandro, CA. So he sends his army of henchmen, which are mostly children, to settle the situation, and local Detective Antonelli (Cerrato) is trying to make sense of it all. What will happen to the...KINDERGARTEN "NINJA"? All we can say is...wow. Like all the best films in cinema history, Kindergarten "Ninja" is a co-production between DARE and America's Best Karate. The gold that this unlikely duo produced is exactly what you might expect. The results speak for themselves. The first thing you may notice about this movie is the title, and the fact that the word ninja is in quotes. Try to think of another movie title where one of the words is in quotes. This should give you some indication of the insane originality (or original insanity) of this oddball outing. Somewhere in the netherworld between a classroom educational film, a home movie, and a professional production lies Kindergarten "Ninja". Thankfully there are plenty of intentional and unintentional laughs along the way, and the sheer amazement you will feel that not only was this made, but distributed around the world, will sustain you through its (barely) 80 minute running time.

It's hard to describe in words what the tone and overall feeling of this movie is, but let's just say "nonsensical" is an understatement. Thankfully, Dwight Clark is on board. The man is truly a powerhouse. He can sing, dance, do Martial Arts, play football, and, most notably, act. Scenes are shot at his own restaurant, Clark's By The Bay. (The main scene there is truly a show-stopper). Not to be outdone, the great George Chung plays Master Chosen One. We absolutely loved his Hawkeye (1988), and Kindergarten "Ninja" just reinforces our fandom. Chapa as Machete is also worth noting, but all the non-actors here steal the show. Especially the kids. Where are they today? And the man who introduces the movie, San Leandro Police Chief Robert Maginnis, what does he think today of the movie? Has he ever seen it? The vast majority of the film's running time is taken up with endless training sequences. Though the musical stylings of one Joel McKellar are inspired by Over the Top (1987), the amount of time spent on watching Dwight Clark to ab crunches with George Chung is, well...over the top. But if you want to be a master playboy like Blade Steel, just learn from his classic pickup lines. His ace in the hole seems to be "Do you like French fries?" so feel free to try that one. Despite the film's unusual nature, it still ends with the time-honored warehouse fight (though we've never seen one quite like this), and, to give you a sense of the level of intelligence at work, the mayor of the town is named, and we quote, Mayor Crookalini.

We guarantee you've never seen a movie like Kindergarten "Ninja" before. The only question is, do you want to? It can be found dirt cheap most places it is sold. If you have a sense of humor and a taste for the odd, we give it a solid recommendation.