When I sat down to watch this, I had a sneaking suspicion I had seen it before. As it turns out, the movie I was thinking of was Ninja Cheerleaders, not Cheerleader Ninjas. That film was about Ninjas who are also Cheerleaders, whereas this one is about Cheerleaders who are also Ninjas. I think. I guess it all comes down to semantics.
Anyway, a Christian coalition of outraged mothers set out on a crusade against gay internet porn. They think a bunch of high school cheerleaders are the cause of all the smut, so they send some delinquent Catholic high school girls to take them down. The cheerleaders soon learn they aren’t strong enough to win the battle, so they turn to a Kung Fu master to train them to be Ninjas.
You would think a movie about high school cheerleaders squaring off against naughty Catholic high school girls would be a can’t-miss scenario, but somehow, the filmmakers manage to screw it up. The best part is Skinamax legend Kira (Sexual Intrigue) Reed who plays a blow-up doll named “Fantasy Girl” who comes to life during one of the nerd’s sexual fantasies. (Apparently, she was also the body double for the rest of the cast.) If it wasn’t for her participation, Cheerleader Ninjas would’ve been virtually unwatchable.
Cheerleader Ninjas aims for the kind of mix of sight gags, send-ups, and humor Zucker/Abrahms/Zucker was known for. Unfortunately, it comes closer to approximating the painfully unfunny lows of the unbearable Friedberg/Seltzer comedy spoofs. I just can’t help but think that this would’ve been a lot funnier had they just played the concept of Cheerleader Ninjas seriously (or at least tongue in cheek) instead of turning it into an all-out spoof with lots of dumb, obvious gags, and a bunch of painfully unfunny fart jokes and gay stereotypes. (I think the only laugh came from the nerd’s bedroom, which is modeled after the bridge of the Enterprise.) The fact that it’s an overlong ninety-six minutes and moves at a snail’s pace doesn’t help either.
I thought it was funny as hell.
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