`Beverly Hills Ninja': Do not pay to see this

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by Will Chen

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The so-called Beverly Hills Ninja accomplishes absolutely nothing a comedy should, except maybe for restating the fact that Chris Farley cannot act in one. The movie attempts to make a farce out of all the Saturday morning kung fu movies by reenacting familiar tricks and scenes and making them seem dumb. The writers try to make the spoken lines sound funny, but they fail in most of their attempts.

The plot involves the told-and-retold story of an orphan abandoned in a basket at sea. The child washes up on the beach of a sacred Japanese island where ninjas train in secrecy. Because of a prophecy about a Great White Ninja, the child Haru, later acted by Farley, is taken in and cared for by the Yoshimoto ninja clan on the island.

The only problem is that Haru grows up to be stupid and clumsy.

He's the only one to fail his final ninja test while his sworn brother Gobei, played by Robin Shou (Liu Kang of Mortal Kombat ), is a supreme master of ninjitsu.

The plot really begins to twist and intensify when a beautiful damsel in distress from Beverly Hills (Nicollette Sheridan) comes to the incredibly hidden island, via bus, seeking help against her evil husband.

Luckily for Haru, all the other ninjas are on an exercise mission, so he sees this as the perfect opportunity to prove his worth as the Great White Ninja.

I have to admit, being a fan of martial arts movies, the first 10 minutes of the movie did seem funny because of the parody of familiar elements and of Chris Farley's one comic uniqueness: His single trick is that when he gets hurt, his reaction is attempting to maintain composure, while "accidentally" revealing to the audience the true pain through that same expression seen in his days at "Saturday Night Live."

Though it is pretty funny at first, the expression eventually makes you wish that you could get a baseball bat -- or a ninja sword in this case -- and pound him a hundred more times to see how long he can keep that act up.

Unfortunately, Farley's grimace just fails to amuse after seeing it for the two-hundredth time.

The other major pitfall of the movie is that the comedy shots are overly predictable. They can be foreseen half a minute before Farley acts them. The movie offers an extreme lack of originality paralleled only by the worst slapstick comedies.

There were, however, a few bright spots amid the agony.

First, Gobei does perform a few authentic ninja stunts that made me nostalgic for the better movies of the 1970s. Second, the movie takes full advantage of its gorgeous blonde heroine with its strategically positioned camera angles.

Also, Beverly Hills Ninja makes use of some exaggerated Asian stereotypes, such as the outrageous spoof on the traditional Black Rain scene. The Yakuza rides in on black Kawasakis with machetes and old Chinese women with outrageous accents having temper tantrums.

Personally, being as politically incorrect as I am, I enjoyed these just as others enjoyed the Bronx 'hood stereotypes in Jackie Chan's movies. Chris Rock also has a few good scenes as an apprentice to the great Haru.

Overall, your money would probably be better spent if you went to the video store and got yourself an old Saturday-morning Bruce Lee movie, but if you really wish to see Farley struggling outside "Saturday Night Live" without David Spade, this would be a great choice.

A friend of mine who saw the movie truly put it best afterward when he said, "Hey, I'd be pissed if I actually paid to see this stuff."

This item appeared in the Arts & Entertainment section of the January 24, 1997 issue.

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