MOVIE REVIEW: TMNT

Nostalgia is an awesome feeling sometimes. This was the case with seeing the resurrection of pop culture icons, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I remember being a kid and seeing all the Halloween costumes, having all the toys, playing the video games and even buying the cassette tapes for the TMNT Concerts. To be truthful, the Turtles never really fell out of the spotlight. There have always been toy lines, television shows and games. I just lost interest the older I got. That is, until I heard there was going to be a completely CGI version of a fourth film. I had my doubts due to the dismal second and third films, and for the most part, some of those doubts went unfounded.

“TMNT” is set many years after the events of “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III.” You remember the cheap cash in where they sent the turtles back in time? Yeah, seems as though whenever a franchise is losing steam they sent you back in time or into outer space. Burn. So this film picks up with the turtles no longer together. Leonardo is in South America learning to be a better leader, Donatello works as a customer service rep (I feel your pain dude), Mikey wears a big fake turtle suit and goes to birthday parties where he is abused and Raph dons a metal suit and fights crime. So far so good until we get to Casey Jones and April O’Neal (voiced by Chris Evans and Sarah Michelle Gellar). Wow. Talk about continuity issues. April O’Neal now works as the owner of a freight company and Casey is her boyfriend/muscle for the job. Weird, but I am still along for the ride. So we are told the story of a proud warrior and his generals searching for immortality. The warrior finds a portal and upon opening it, he is granted immortality, but at a price. All his generals are turned to stone and thirteen monsters are released unto the world. So we come to present day and find the warrior, now known as Max Winters, (voiced by Patrick Stewart) is in search of his stone generals and the monsters. He wishes to send them back to the portal and parish, as immortality was not all that he had hoped for. So he has the Foot Clan working for him. They are now led by Karai (Ziyi Zhang), which was also confusing, but hey, it’s the turtles. So now it’s the same familiarity of the previous films in which we get the turtles learning to work together allover again all while trying to save the city from certain destruction.

The animation was outstanding for the movie. There were certain scenes that left me wanting more, or even left me visually stunned. If any sequels are made (which of course there will be) then CGI is the way to go. I even know that “Ghostbusters III” will be going the route of CGI, so it is not going away anytime soon, folks. I even like the design of the turtles this time around. Definitely more mature and closer to the original comic book roots.
The movie had great humor, nice action and I liked a change of pace in the story. So did I absolutely love this movie? The answer is no. Surprisingly, I was bored by it at times. Maybe I am too old for “TMNT?” I cannot be sure. The film was definitely the most “adult oriented” of the four films, and I appreciated that, but I couldn’t help but lose interest as the movie went on. I cannot quite put my finger on it either, which is frustrating. The film was fun to watch, and I love that the Ninja Turtles have not fallen the way of “He-Man” or “Power Rangers” and just fallen off the face of the Earth. The turtles have staying power, which is all apart of their appeal. Did I not like the film? Well no, I liked it; I just think that it could have done a better job in keeping my interest at times.

The ending gives us an almost kind of “Batman Begins” approach to setting up the direction of the sequel (Shredder Returns, anyone?), but sadly, by that point, I could not muster enough excitement. I also hear that for the sequel, the writer/director Kevin Munroe will be giving us an even more adult turtle’s movie by going the PG-13 route, so I would be eager to see that. All in all, I wanted to like this movie so much. I really did. It just fell short of what I was hoping for. I would still recommend it for fans of the old cartoon series. Hopefully the sequel will recapture everything I was hoping it would be.