Iké Boys

December 22nd, 1999...

Two Japan-obsessed nerdy teenagers in the middle of Oklahoma want to impress the new Japanese exchange student, only for all three of them to be transformed into the super-powered beings, after they show her an obscure anime that turns out to actually be a prophecy for the end of the world that is coming on Y2K.

Mixing live-action with some anime-like animated digressions, maybe the most laudable part of this otherwise largely unimpressive low-budget film is that most movies set in the 90s these days either make it look like a day-glo wonderland of acid wash jeans, neon tops, and radical dudes with spiked frosted tips, OR like a “Grunge” fantasy of a record shop, when it was actually mostly dominated by the slowly falling apart trash, bland styles, heavy wood furniture, and thick ruffled curtains left-over from the ‘70s and ‘80s, especially in middle America, so it was nice to see the film capture how boring and ugly that whole time period was.

Another good part, despite ultimately amounting to nothing, is that the two main nerds here are your typical gross and weird asiaphiles, but when the Japanese foreign exchange student arrives, she doesn’t care about any of that Japanese Otaku shit, and is actually super into Native American culture, so that was a nice reflection of how strange that kind of obsessive cultural interest is, or at least, it would’ve been, if anything had really come of it.

The film also captures the way that certain films used to be really hard, if not impossible, to get ahold of and see, and how some of those films became legendary specifically because of the exclusivity that came with that. Being able to say that you had seen any of those particular films became a badge of honor, it was film nerd street cred to casually respond, “oh, yeah, I’ve seen that movie.” But now that you can see so many different foreign, old, obscure, and just plain odd films, from feature length to short films, at pretty much any moment, on one streaming service or another, or on a platform like YouTube… nobody really gives a shit about films like Eraserhead, or Tetsuo Iron Man or La Jete anymore.

C'est la vie.

But in the 90s…? It was a lifestyle.

Above all else, I don’t know what the intent was here? What does this film think it’s saying? Anything at all? What experience is it attempting to provide? What kind of movie is it trying to be… Funny? Fun? Cool? Silly? Nostalgic? Action?

Entertaining?

Because it really wasn’t any of those options. In fact, it really wasn’t anything at all.

It feels like they were maybe shooting for a Napoleon Dynamite meets self-aware Power Rangers type of independent film, but completely lacked all of the talent and resources needed pull it off. It was also only 90 minutes long, but it was way too slow, so it felt way too long. Worst of all, the costumes, especially the all-important hero costumes, were absolutely fucking terrible. Just complete shit. And that’s even if you allow for the fact that they intended to have a Power Rangers-like feel.

Bottom line… this film just isn’t any good.

It was never really all that clever, which I think it was trying to be. It wasn’t ever funny either, which I’m honestly not sure if it was trying to be or not. It was definitely never exciting or flashy. Above all, it was not entertaining.

It was just… not good.

The use of animtion for the big fights makes sense. I get it. A, it’s a film that specifically revolves around anime-obsessed nerds, so stylistically, it fits. B, the film obviously couldn’t afford to do it live action and have it look good, so they opted to go animated. But even with that understanding, the animated sequences only made the film’s action set pieces even more uninteresting.

At one point, it seemed like the film maybe intended to say something about loneliness and found families, and things like that, maybe, but it basically abandons the attempt as the film goes on, or maybe it was just… incapable of crafting the pieces needed for that kind of arc. I don’t know, either way, it never came anywhere close to sticking the landing on that theme.

It was barely able to make the first leap, honestly.

In the cast and crew’s defense… they tried. There was effort and sincerity. They were just undermined by the lack of a budget and the general inability of all involved, but still… there is no amount of sincerity or effort that would have been enough to polish this turd. As a Power Rangers-esque nostalgia riff there just isn’t much going on here. I can’t imagine anyone finding anything of any value here, beyond maybe the briefly overly-effusive embrace of the film’s gimmick by a bunch of drunk-on-excitment semi-ironic Tokusatsu fans at a late night showing, or at a film festival maybe.

The movie does have Billy Zane and Ben Browder in it, so there’s that at least, but also, this does make me feel kind of bad for both of them and their careers...

Much like the film Colonials, Ike Boys is yet another low-mid-budget genre film where the creators’ ambition far, far, faaaaaaaaar outweighed the quality of talent, resources, and budget they had available to them. But where Colonials seemed like it was maybe a possible money-laundering scam, Ike Boys seems more like it’s the result of people who simply have too much money and idle time available to them, and have lived a life without honest constructive criticism. While this film is definitely not as noxious as Ironic Cinema garbage like The FP or Hobo With A Shotgun, it does feel like it was the kind of thing that was born out of in-joke riffs amongst some friends while hanging out, the kind of in-joke riffs that weren’t that funny to begin with, and would’ve been better off forgotten. The money spent on here would’ve been better spent on a completely different project, one made by completely different people.

Basically, in a better world, these people should be Producers.

And that’s not to say that this film is absolutely awful scum of the earth or anything, there’s no bad or ignorant or evil intent here that I can see, it’s just that the film is so so so… not good.

And in such an all-around mediocre way too.

Thumbs way down.