This movie is a live-action adaptation of that old standby of Saturday morning action cartoons, "He-Man and the Masters of the Universe." Did anyone ever figure out WHY they were the Masters of the Universe? Or heck, even who the Masters of the Universe were, besides He-Man? Were they his sidekicks? How did He-Man get to be Master of the Universe? As far as I can recall, he was a pale imitation of Conan who went around fighting evil on a planet called Eternia. That's ONE planet. And he wasn't even the Master of it.

Also, I seem to recall He-Man having a "secret identity" which was basically He-Man with a shirt. Why a sword-wielding fantasy warrior needs a secret identity, I don't know. But he was in his secret identity about 0.01% of the time, so no biggie.

You see the problem I'm getting into here? A lot of movies have mangled classic properties, comics, TV shows, video games, books, etc. But in this case the source material is pretty hilariously bad already (although admittedly it was a low-budget kid's cartoon -- not that that's an excuse).

What's REALLY weird about this movie is that they jettison like 90% of the original He-Man stuff and replace it with different, equally bad and stupid and inane stuff. It actually hurts this movie, because a movie set entirely in Eternia would have been a lot more goofy fun than what we get.

That's right, this movie is not set in Eternia, for the most part. We barely see Eternia. We see the throne room of what I believe was Castle Greyskull, where Skeletor rallies the troops in a scene that is NOTHING LIKE "STAR WARS" AT ALL. The fact that the guards look EXACTLY LIKE THE ONES IN "RETURN OF THE JEDI" and the music is VIRTUALLY IDENTICAL TO THE "IMPERIAL MARCH" is surely a coincidence.

Now, putting that aside, this does look rather visually impressive. But that's it: the whole movie's budget went into that throne room and those guards. I think there's one more scene in fuzzy midget's laboratory (I'll get to him in a minute), and then we're whisked away from Eternia to...Earth. Good ol', cheap ol' Earth. So now we have heroic fantasy warrior (and friends) running around inexpensive small town America, in such stunning locales as warehouses and the bushes behind fast food restaurants.

Dolph Lundgren is in this movie. Dolph Lundgren is He-Man. What else needs be said? Dolph's He-Man is all the various fantasy heroes, Hercules and Sinbad and Deathstalker, plus low-rent Ahnold, rolled into one. All those characters together basically nets you a 0.5 dimensional character. He swings his sword, by Jiminy, and he swings it well.

Frank Langhella is ALSO in the movie, as Skeletor (buried under makeup). But you know who else is here, as the two dippy teenagers who get involved in the goings-on? Courteney Cox and the guy who plays Robert Duncan McNeill (Tom Paris on "Voyager"). See them...before they were famous!

The plot is a vague blur, but I don't think there would have been much to explain anyway. Skeletor wants to enslave Eternia, so of course he tries to open a portal to Earth. The best way to enslave a place is to open a portal away from it. The portal is opened by a weird thing. I can't completely describe the weird thing, but I can comfortably state that it isn't a fantasy cliche. It's called a "sonic transducer" or some such. So it plays music. Of course. And it opens portals. Naturally. And, of course, it's in the keeping of a small fuzzy midget who invents things. So He-Man, female sidekick Teela, and her dad (I think they actually referred to him as "Man-At-Arms") go to get it.

They open a portal and go to Earth (with fuzzy midget along for the ride). But, wouldn't ya know it, the weird thing gets torn from them and winds up in Tom Paris' lap. He thinks it's one of those high-tech synthesizers and, if I recall correctly, tries to sell it. This is the only thing I recall Tom or Courteney contributing to the plot.

Somehow, Skeletor gets to Earth without the weird thing. I admit my memory is letting you good people down here, but I can't think of a single scenario in which it made sense for Skeletor to come to Earth. He was trying to conquer Eternia, I thought. So he was either trying to open this portal for no reason, or else the heroes opened it for no reason (to get away?) and Skeletor came after them, again for no reason. And either way, I thought it was supposed to be impossible to get to Earth without the weird thing. The movie made some explanation for all of this, but it obviously hasn't stuck with me. The explanation that stuck with me is that Earth is a lot cheaper place to film.

Ther are two other scenes I can recall with clarity. One is fuzzy midget rustlin' up some native grub for our dimensional travellers, returning with a bucket of fried chicken. They dig in, then act horrified when they realize they're eating MEAT. Yes, these are hack-n-slash VEGETARIAN warriors.

The other involves He-Man "hover-surfing" down a boulevard, picking off Skeletor's men. I remember this because it was a pretty atrociously bad effect, matte lines and everything, and was obviously intended as the film's big set piece. It just seemed so incongruous after an hour and a half of running around the streets of Burbank.

Three turkeys, and watch with a group.