Sword-swinging, face-smashing, ball-crushing ninja girl power. Feminism isn’t all that rare in B-movies, but it’s often embedded into the subtext (ex. the female hero—”The Final Girl”—who typically triumphs in slasher movies). Not so with Ninja Cheerleaders. It’s all on the surface here. April, Courtney, and Monica, our three ninja cheerleaders, are all smart, charismatic gals who don’t need a man for anything. They don’t even care about boyfriends. They spend all their time either in ninja training or making the grades (and raising the money) so they can get the heck out of their depressing small town and go to Brown University. They’re all devastatingly cute, but writer/director David Presley spends more time flaunting their smarts than he does showing off their bodies. They all work as strippers on the side, but, hey, Brown’s an expensive school. The plot here deals with the girls fighting a gangster (Michael Paré!) who kidnaps their ninja master (George Takei!) and steals the safe that contains their college savings. It’s a comedy.
It’s also surprisingly wholesome. An obligatory smidge of nudity—none of it involving the ninja girls—and a few sex jokes in scenes where the ladies deflect leering perverts are as far into the gutter as this gets.
Not to be confused with the sleazier Cheerleader Ninjas from 2002.