“We ask you to leave it pure as found. We are to it forever bound.”

Justin’s rating: I have the spirit of the flukeworm, the honey badger, and the turkey vulture

Justin’s review: Anyone remember Captain Planet and the Planeteers? As far as I can tell, it was a cartoon designed to (a) make us distrust anyone with blue skin and green hair and (b) feel like our entire planet was being destroyed and would probably be no more after next Tuesday. Fortunately, the latter never happened, and I think we have Chuck Norris to thank for that.

Our favorite Texas Ranger took time out of law enforcement to star in Forest Warrior, a 1996 family film where he plays a ghost in the woods with a magnificent beard. Chuck Norris has the beard, not the woods.

Norris is McKenna, a stone-faced woodsman from the late 1800s who’d married a native* and got himself killed in an ambush by six miscreants. But don’t you cry yet, dear reader, for McKenna becomes a spirit who can then transform into a bear, wolf, and eagle. You can imagine that this presents a lot of opportunities for practical jokes.

Anyway, basically he becomes this shapeshifting druid whose legend is so inspiring that a century later, a group of kids decide to form a club (“The Lords of Tanglewood”) to protect his forest and presumably offer human sacrifice to the nature gods. They’ve got their work cut out for them, too, because cackling, callous loggers — led by Terry Kiser (Weekend at Bernie’s) — are on the way to chop down all of the trees and make the Lorax cry.

As the kids find themselves outclassed by these cartoonish villains, McKenna comes back from the dead to kick their butt, because Chuck Norris is not going to let an incorporeal form stop him from breaking out his trademark spin kicks. Oh, and one of the kids gets herself blown up, so McKenna uses spirit magic to resurrect her. Unfortunately, she comes back as a zombie hungering for brains, and that’s where the R-rating kicks in.

OK, while the resurrection is true, the girl is disappointingly normal afterward. No trauma at remembering her own demise, no screaming fits, nothing. You disappoint me, movie.

But where Forest Warrior excels is weaponizing schmaltz and channeling that into a kid fantasy that just so happens to star a shapeshifting Chuck Norris in native garb. I mean, the dude is invincible enough as a normal human, but now that he can decide to turn into a bear and swipe off your head? That’s like giving the Terminator a machine gun that shoots nukes.

You can put Forest Warrior in the weird category of movies where the noble martial art lead is cosplaying as a Native American without actually being one. I think this became about half of Steven Seagal’s movies in his later years.

If you want to see a goofy mashup of Goonies kids hanging out in the coolest treehouse ever, Chuck Norris transitioning from a hawk to a flying kick, some nice forest scenery, a baby bear, and some Lifetime movie moments, well, here you go. You summoned this into existence with your bizarre movie fetish, and now you’re going to have to live with it. Forest Warrior is bad in that way that only kids films can be, but it’s also kind of amazing too.

*She’s never named or seen on screen and probably only was a mention to explain his clothes and why he’s got such a raging love-fest for the forest.

Intermission!

• Chuck Norris likes to reenact Last of the Mohicans on his day off, just running full-tilt through a forest
• SPIN KICK OF JUSTICE
• Forget Morgan Freeman, Roscoe Lee Brown is the best narrator of all time. C’mon, he did Babe!
• I think that bear ate him, tell me differently
• I didn’t expect to see Hot Lips show up in this
• All town meetings should end with a potluck and hoe down
• Drunk dads are sad dads
• Wait, is that girl praying to… nature? “Amen!”
• Please tell me I’m not alone in seeing all of those lone mountain shots and thinking that there would be a volcano eruption by the end of the film
• “Scruples boy, scruples!”
• Never forget toilet paper when you’re off to camp in the woods
• That is a crazy big, crazy awesome treehouse. Seriously, who built that thing?
• Aww it’s a baby bear, let’s go play with it and not ask where its protective mother is!
• Thumping on a log is the “danger signal”
• HAWK JUMP KICK FOR BABY BEAR JUSTICE!
• OK the oath scene may be the hokiest thing I’ve ever seen in a film
• Treehouse hammocks can’t stop the snakes from gettin’ ya
• Their parents really have no problem with five coed unsupervised kids sleeping in nature with confirmed bear sightings? Because that’s what I wish my childhood had been.
• We can dunk on this movie, but the soundtrack is really chill, so give it that much credit
• Wait, he has telepathic mind powers now? Because of the hawk?
• Did no one have a cell phone in 1996?
• A few trucks driving by is enough to shake an entire building like an earthquake
• “They have CBs AND walkie-talkies!”
• Kid environmentalists = “Green Weenies”
• Potatoes up the tailpipe, what will they think of next?
• Just throw a guy off a cliff, he’ll be fine, this is a kids movie
• “Wish we could just cut down these trees!” “Me too!”
• These loggers were hoping to have a good impromptu dance party that by no means looks ridiculous. My favorite was the guy with the giant chainsaw who used it as a fake guitar.
• Well you just shot at the cops, that’ll end well for you
• Chuck Norris can stop a chainsaw with his bare hands
• What’s the reward for saving a forest from being chopped down? To chop some of it down and build a new treehouse!