Robo Warriors (1996)

 

By all accounts I should love this one: it has aliens, but more importantly giant robots fighting. Well, mech suits, actually. But this is alas not as awesome as one might think. The unofficial third installment in Stuart Gordon's robot trilogy, this one can't hold a candle to 'Robot Jox'. 

But let's not get ahead of ourselves, shall we?

In 2036, the Earth is ruled by the Teridaxx, an alien race resembling something out of 'Star Trek' (because of the nasal ridges) with metallic blue skin. Disputes used to be settled by combat between giant robots, but Earth has no more warriors left so the Teridaxx now rule supreme. 

Which means in our lifetime they should be building giant mech suits about now. Make it happen, science!

Zach is a young kid who wants to find the last of the Robo Warriors in order to challenge the Teridaxx again and free Earth. He eventually finds this man - Ray Gibson - and after some coercion gets him to track down the last of the Earth bots and so head out to fight the Teridaxx' robot Txu-Gaaru. 

Also: this is very much a kids' film. 

There's not a lot to say, really. James Remar gives it his all as Ray Gibson (as he always does), but the story and other character/actors are incredibly bland and dull and the delivery is pretty stale. You also get James Tolkan thrown in under some heavy make-up, but if you want him to call other people a slacker, you'd be wasting your time.

Kudos if you got that reference without looking up who James Tolkan is, though.

The robots look alright, but there is a surprising lack of robot fights. There's a half-hearted one halfway through and one at the end, but even that doesn't do much in the sense of being this all ecompassing finale. In fact, it is quite boring and non-eventful. A shame, because the puppeteering and guys in suits portraying the robots look fairly decent and they shot everything at low angles, making them appear suitably large and lumbering. 

The story is as bland as it gets, ticking all the cliché boxes but not in a good way. And there's just too much coincidence and no difficulty whatsoever in completing the quest. The kid wants to find Gibson, who apparently disappeared ten years ago? It takes him less than a day to track him down. The giant robot is hard to find in the jungle? It takes our protagonists a couple of hours to find it, smack in the middle of Teridaxx' controlled land! If these aliens couldn't find a giant heap of metal right under their noses for so long, maybe they don't deserve to rule any planet. 

So this is one for the youngest among us who enjoy robots, but even they might find this one a bit flat and boring. Everyone else can just ignore this thing exists.