Images via the Surf Ninjas DVD

I feel a bit relived right now. Maybe it’s because of the lack of events going on right now and a lack of urgency that I feel that right now there’s less pressure on me to get be cranking out content. I know I shouldn’t be feeling that way and that given the way the internet works I need to be constantly churning stuff out but I feel the ratio to my need to crank out content and my obligations to other things was originally at a 60 to 40 split where as now it is a 40 to 60 split.

1 of the things I feel I’m obligated to do is getting the rest of my site finished. This is something I know I need to get done ASAP because once the rest of the site done I can focus 100% on creating stories. I think I’m almost there. In case you haven’t noticed by now or if you just have Ad Block on I now have ads on my site so I can at least start making some money off of my site but there’s still so much more I want to do with my site.

One reason I’m not completely done with my site and I’m just going to straight out admit that that is I’m not exactly what you would call programming savvy. Sure I’ve learned things over the years but honestly there’s a lot of work I need to put in to get this site looking and feeling the way I want it to be and while I’ve been trying to get most of it figured out on my own there’s a lot of hard coding that needs to be done and most of that is just way too advanced for me so I usually keep finding myself walking into my day job and asking one of the programmers at the office if he can help.

After spending so much time just staring at my site and trying to figure out how to make it look pretty I think I need to take a break from that and just get back to basics and crank out some content. While figuring out what to write about I took a good long look at what I have up realized that I’ve pretty much neglected the Television/Movies section. For months after I launched this site all I had in there was a write up for when Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto was playing the theme song from Super Mario Brothers with The Roots on the Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.

Now that’s a cool story and its something that I’m sure got me some easy SEO results but originally when I put in the Television/Movies section my plans were aside from talking about cool stuff I saw in a movie or on TV, I would also use my encyclopedic knowledge on a wide variety of movies and TV shows to write essays, opinion pieces, or just put out random trivia which is what I’m going to do right now starting with the 1993 classic Surf Ninjas.

Surf Ninjas is a movie that I feel is as ’90s as you can get. When it came out it was a blend of two of the hottest things in pop culture at the time: martial arts and surf culture.

The martial arts influence was obviously a result of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles craze of the late ’80s and early ’90s while the surfing influence was an attempt to cash in on the success of the Keanu Reeves classic Point Break which came out 2 years earlier.

Check out this trailer which if I remember correctly was one of the previews on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III VHS and you can see how much surf/skate culture was so ingrained in this film complete with the voice over from the stoned surfer dude and a black guy saying “Brothers don’t surf.”

The basic plot of Surf Ninjas is this: Two teenage surfing brothers living in Southern California discover that they are the lost princes of Patusan, a small fictional nation in Asia under the rule of the iron-fisted Colonel Chi. After their adopted father is kidnapped by Colonel Chi’s men, the brothers and their allies make their way to Patusan where they lead a surf attack on Colonel Chi’s island fortress. After defeating Colonel Chi and his army the eldest brother is crowned King of Patusan but rather than accept the title his first royal decree is to have the monarchy dissolved and turn Patusan into a democracy.

The cast of Surf Ninjas consisted of:

Ernie Reyes Jr. as Johnny the eldest brother and main protagonist of the film. Surf Ninjas is basically Ernie’s follow up to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II where he played Keno, the martial arts knowing pizza delivery boy who helps the Turtles defeat the Foot Clan. I can see Surf Ninjas being an attempt at turning Ernie into the next big action star or heartthrob of the ’90s, which unfortunately didn’t work out for him. Checking Ernie’s IMDB and Wikipedia pages reveal that he is still working regularly but it’s mostly just some stunt work here and there as well as a few guest starring or minor roles and background character work. His most prominent work after Surf Ninjas are probably a brief storyline on Kung Fu: The Legend Continues as Sing Ling and guest appearances on NCIS: Los Angeles where he played a Nepalese soldier named Jay Thapa. Post Surf Ninjas Ernie only had two really big roles. The first was the host of Final Fu a martial arts competition show that aired on MTV2 which was highly criticized but what do you expect considering it was on MTV2? Ernie’s other big role was in The Red Canvas, a martial arts movie he also executive produced.

Nicolas Cowan played the younger brother, Adam. Adam’s role in the film was comedy relief and once again because this was the early ’90s the humor was Bart Simpson-esque with Adam getting into mischief and also acting like a little shit towards most of the adults.

Adam also had another gimmick in this movie by being able to predict the future and affect the outcome of things by playing a Surf Ninjas videogame on his Sega Game Gear. This was obviously a blatant attempt at product placement but it was also pretty meta considering that Sega released a Surf Ninjas tie-in videogame for the Sega Game Gear right before the film came out and this was supposedly the first time a movie-based videogame came out before the film itself.

According to IMDB Surf Ninjas was Cowan’s last role and a quick Google search reveals that he is currently working as a graphic designer and illustrator.

Rob Schneider as Iggy, Adam and Johnny’s friend who is the main source of comedic relief. It’s kind of weird seeing Rob Schneider in this. I mean I know he’s Rob Schneider and he’s not exactly known for being in good movies but Surf Ninjas was made in 1992/1993 which was pretty much right in the middle of Rob’s tenure on Saturday Night Live so you think he could have used that to leverage slightly better roles for himself.

Most of the humor in the movie comes from Rob being the token dumbass of the group. Although Rob does have some moments like when they’re in a high-speed chase and he manages to stop them by throwing unlit sticks of dynamite at them.

There’s a couple running jokes involving Schneider throughout the film. One is that he thinks he has some kind of psychic powers because every time he says “What if…” and whatever it is he’s asking actually happens. Another running joke with him is that his character Iggy thinks he is really the prince and heir to the Patusan throne while Johnny and Adam are just decoys and at one point Johnny actually shoots him down by saying “You can’t be the King of Patusan. You’re not Asian.” I’m not sure if this was a coincidence or if it was an inside joke because in really life Schneider is of Filipino descent like Cowan and Reyes.

Rob Schneider is probably the most famous and most active of the Surf Ninja alumni even though the majority of his parts are in really bad Adam Sandler movies.

Ernie Reyes Jr.’s father, Ernie Reyes Sr. played the one-eyed Zatch, a former Patusan royal guard who became the boys’ protector, saving them from assassination attempts early in the movie as well as being the source of all the exposition.

As a martial artist Ernie Reyes Sr. is probably more involved behind the scenes as a choreographer and a stuntman than he is in front of the camera as an actor. According to IMDB his last entries as both an actor and a stunt man were back in 2012.

Kelly Hu played Ro-May, Johnny’s love interest who was bethrothed to him when they were babies. I remember a couple years ago I came across an interview Hu did during I think at the height of that Martial Law show she did with Arsenio Hall and Sammo Hung and Hu recalled a time when she was working on Surf Ninjas and she was supposed to kick a stuntman in the nuts and the she was a bit worried about doing it but the stuntman was cool with it saying he could take it but she kicked him and he went down-hard.

Like Ernie Reyes Jr., Hu is still finding regularly work but like Ernie it’s mostly just guest roles and small parts.

Anthony Terrel Smith AKA Tone Loc played Lieutenant Spence, the police officer investigating the ninja attacks on Adam and Johnny as well as their adopted father’s kidnapping who ends up tagging along with them when they go to Patusan. His most significant role in the film had to be the part where he says “Brothers don’t surf.”

John Karlen played Mac, Johnny and Adam’s adoptive father who is only in the movie for maybe 10 minutes or so because he gets kidnapped by Colonel Chi’s ninjas which is the impetus for the boys journey back to Patusan. Karlen is probably best known for his work in the ’60s as Willie Loomis on Dark Shadows and also for his supporting roll on Cagney & Lacey in the ’80s as Mary Beth Lacey’s husband, Harvey. According to Wikipedia Karlen officially retired from acting in 2010 but other than an appearance in the 2016 short, “The Job Interview” his last role was in the 1996 TV movie Cagney & Lacey: True Convictions.

Leslie Nielson played Colonel Chi the evil foreign mercenary who took over Patusan and judging by his sense of fashion has a huge Asian fetish. As a result of being trampled by an elephant during the initial coup, Colonel Chi is a cyborg. Colonel Chi is a bit of a mystery on quite a few levels. One is that he’s portrayed as a total dumbass. I know it’s a kid’s movie but still, how is he able to successfully overthrow a monarchy and take over a country? Also how the hell did they get Leslie Nielsen to do this? The man was Frank Drebin in the Naked Gun movies and Dr. Rumack in Airplane!. The man was already a comedy legend by the time Surf Ninjas came out so you would think that he would turn it down for being beneath him. Also Nielson was already in his mid-’60s while filming Surf Ninjas. You would think they would find somebody younger and more intimidating to do it. I’m guessing Thomas Ian Griffith from The Karate Kid III was busy.

The whole cyborg thing is also a bit of a head scratcher.

I’m guessing part of it was done as a plot device to give Colonel Chi a believable weakness which was water but I also think the idea was to make the already old Leslie Nielson a more menacing and imposing figure like Dr. Doom from the Marvel comics or Cobra Commander from GI Joe. Nielsen unfortunately passed away in 2010 but he was still pretty much working till the end.

Keone Young played Baba Ram, a spiritual leader in the same vein of the Dalai Lama. Baba Ram’s only purpose aside from making this movie as culturally insensitive and offensive to Asians as possible was so that they had a way to work in the song “Barbara Ann” by the Beach Boys because what surf movie is complete without it? Young’s career has been pretty prolific covering television, film, and videogames. Some of his roles include the voice of Storm Shadow in the Sunbow/Marvel GI Joe: A Real American Hero cartoon from 1985 and Triad gangster, Bohai Lin in Sons of Anarchy.

As I said previously Surf Ninjas is a movie that is as ’90s as you can get and I feel it does this with such a strong connection the whole surfing culture.

From the moto surf scene in the beginning of the movie…

…To the “Barbara Ann” musical numbers.

It even has the lame teacher who uses the word “groovy.” Seriously this was such a cliche trope in movies where all authority figures would try to act cool and relateable to kids by speaking slang from the ’60s. Fun fact: the guy who played the Principal in the film is Surf Ninjas director, Neal Israel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9ak8lZvF3s

The actions scenes are pretty much what you would expect from a ’90s action movie aimed at kids being very reminiscent of something from Power Rangers or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles films with enough slap-stick humor tossed in to remind you that you’re watching a comedy movie.

Watching Surf Ninjas it’s pretty obvious that it hasn’t aged well.

As ’90s as this movie is most of the jokes and humor were already outdated. For instance, due to the fact that Colonel Chi’s men run round in camouflage outfits and pop up randomly Adam calls them “Quimbies” a reference to the Inspector Gadget character Chief Quimby who would pop up randomly disguised as a random object in the background to give Gadget his assignments.

Another outdated joke is when the protagonists meet Ro-May’s father who is named “Gum-Bey” they keep mispronouncing it as “Gumby” another outdated reference, this one being related to the old claymation TV series of the same name. In fact, Johnny even acknowledges this references when they are first introduced to Gum-Bey and responds by saying “As in Pokey’s friend?”

You also have this part where Zatch has Johnny prove his worth by challenging him to a duel. A duel which Johnny wins by carving a Z into Zatch’s shirt and saying “Never mess with Zorro.”

This Zorro reference really makes me scratch my head. The Antonio Banderas movies are still a few years away at this point. The last Zorro movie was made in ’74 while a parody Zorro movie was made in ’81. Other than a somewhat obscure Zorro television series which aired on the Family Channel from 1990-93 the only way people will get the Zorro reference is if they saw a Zorro reference in another movie/ show.

Using outdated jokes can’t help this movie age well because they rely too much on the audience being able to recognize the joke and still finding it funny. Given that this is a kid’s movie using these jokes was a risk because what are the odds that kids will be able to remember references that are already years old. Hell, what are the odds that most of the kids who saw this in 1993 were even alive to see the shows and movies that these references are from?

Out of all the jokes and humor that they tried to cram into Surf Ninjas the only period correct one has to be the psych jokes and looking back that was a pretty stupid joke and honestly I can’t think of any movies who used it post ’97.

Tone Loc’s presence also I feel adds to the outdatedness because I feel he’s a remnant of the ’80s. Not to be mean but I feel part of the reason they got Tone Loc is because he was the only rapper willing to be in this movie and I think the only reason Tone loc was willing to do Surf Ninjas was because at this point he was doing what he could to stay in the spotlight. Tone Loc’s biggest hits “Wild Thing” and “Funky Cold Medina” came out in ’88 and ’89 respectively and although those who watched Surf Ninjas when it first came out might remember those songs and remember who Tone Loc was, those previous successes were still too long ago to help keep him relevant. Post Surf Ninjas Tone Loc does have a few more movie and television roles under his belt his most prominent probably being Ace Ventura: Pet Detective and Blank Check he never was able to find the same amount of success other rappers have both with his music and film career.

Rewatching Surf Ninjas in today’s age and you’ll see it as a movie that makes you wonder “What were they thinking in the ’90s?” This is a movie that is full of absurdities and exaggerations but that’s pretty much exactly what the ’90s were like.

Surf Ninjas is a pretty forgettable movie but I believe this is partly because it just came out at a bad time. When Surf Ninjas came out it was too late to capitalize on the success of Point Break and too soon to be a ride the coattails of Blue Crush, Lords of Dog Town, or all those surf-themed Disney Channel Original Movies. Although even if Surf Ninjas did come out at later it wouldn’t have mattered because that wave (no pun intended) of surf-themed movies of the late ’90/early ’00s were never able to find the same success nor were they able to bring the same attention to surfing that Point Break was able to do.

Looking back at Suf Ninjas and with people stupid shit for the ‘gram and internet fame and especially right now with the Kiki/In My Feelings Challenge being a popular thing I’m surprised nobody ever tried bringing back moto surfing.

If you’re looking for a good movie I would keep moving but if you’re looking to kill an hour and a half with bad ’90s humor and cheesy toned down martial arts then I would sit down and give Surf Ninjas a try.