Ninja Party follows friends Alexa, Nicky, Sasha and Carla (Annicka Dolonius, Bea Galvez, Julz Savard and Elora Espano), who all study at an exclusive all-girls Catholic school. Nicky is secretly jealous of Alexa, who is effortlessly staying at the top of the class. Tensions between the friends rise when Alexa's racy production of Lysistrata causes the school's principal to cancel the Valentine's Day soiree, which Nicky has been organizing.
The tension doesn't last, however. The film jumps ahead to the two making up, and hatching a plan to hold another soiree in secret. The film then becomes about the fallout of that event, which features the titular activity. Ninja Party is a story of young girls gone wild; of the consequences of unchecked privilege, and the limitations of a Catholic education. It's kind of like an all-girls version of Gino Santos' The Animals, minus the insider's perspective. It's kind of gross, and it's kind of pointless.
It's actually hard to tell what the film is trying to say. It doesn't have a very strong perspective. It doesn't have a clear protagonist from which we are meant to experience these events. It switches up between the four main girls, but there isn't really much differentiating their outlooks. The film doesn't really spend much time exploring the specifics of their separate lives. The film could have been pared down to the conflict between Nicky and Alexa, and it wouldn't really be much different. There would just be a couple fewer girls to get naked on camera.
And all this provocation doesn't really amount to a whole lot. There isn't much contemplation to go with the depiction of the sexual activities of these Catholic schoolgirls. There isn't any point to any of it. The film doesn't get into the consequences. It doesn't get into the causes. It doesn't get into the circumstances that lead to these decisions. By the end of all of this, it isn't any clearer why these girls are taking part in these ninja parties. The film doesn't need to provide a clear answer, but it might have helped if it put forward a couple of theories.
The film risks nothing in its empty depiction of naked bodies. It doesn't even provide enough of a position to provoke outrage, or any other meaningful emotion for that matter. It just seems to have nothing to offer beyond the concept of a ninja party. It feels like the entire movie has been produced just so that it can say that those things happen. It stops short of providing any insight at all into the phenomenon. The girls keep saying they’re having fun. They’re saying they want to do it. But there just isn’t any examination. The production is pretty shoddy. The music cuts in and out at seemingly random intervals. The editing doesn't make a whole lot of sense. The acting is okay given the material, but this is no showcase for these young actresses.
Ninja Party doesn’t make much of an effort to understand its subjects. It doesn’t even make much of an effort to hide the fact that its actresses aren’t really Catholic schoolgirls. Intruding into the reality of what the film is depicting is the fact that the three of the four main actresses have visible tattoos. One would think at the very least that for the sake of verisimilitude, the production would have tried to cover that up. There’s even a scene where the principal chides Alexa for wearing lipstick. It only makes sense that tattoos would provoke more outrage. But the movie just doesn’t get that far. Because all that matters is that these girls are getting naked.
My Rating:
