Review: TMNT

“Giddy as a schoolboy” is what you could say about me after seeing the preview for this one the first time (credit Elsa from “The Last Crusade” for that quote, for the record…), and I can’t say that I was disappointed. TMNT lived up to my expectations and made the jump to a new generation and computer graphics effectively.

The story is generally related to the previous three live action movies, but somewhat loosely… The Shredder is dead (or is he?) and the Turtles are bored without a Foot Clan to thwart on a daily basis. Then, a billionaire (voiced by Patrick Stewart…w00t!) starts rounding up monsters in the New York area that were released over 3000 years ago, and have been running loose ever since (what they’re doing in NYC, and why the Turtles have never seen them before, no one knows…and makes little sense…but whatever…). Anyway, the Turtles have to re-train themselves to work as a team to take care of this new threat.

The real plus to doing it CGI this time around is that they could do fight scenes and action more like they were done in the cartoon, with Michaelangelo skateboarding through the sewers, or Leonardo riding on the wheel of an airplane into New York… These are things that are difficult to carry out in a big turtle suit, like in the previous iterations. The CGI really lent itself to the franchise and I think it strengthened it quite a bit.

Also, there were a few “nods” to the first movie from 1990 with some certain quotes… Lines like “…and I thought Girl Scouts were pushy…” and “…two minutes…for high sticking…” were both included in this new movie, and both of these were also exchanges in the first movie. I guess I’m glad they stuck to the heritage a bit, without over-doing it…

My only real complaint with the movie is that it was a bit short, at 87 minutes, but then again, I don’t think its story needed any more time. As in, while I’d like to pay the big bucks for a full-length film (i.e. closer to 2 hours), at the same time, I’d rather not see an extra 40 min. of superfluous plot.

So yeah, if you were/are a fan of the cartoon series or movies, I’d say this movie is well worth your time, or if you have kids that you’d like to introduce to the franchise. If you’re a general movie-goer, you probably won’t like it, but if you’re familiar with the series, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

Oh yeah, and the song playing during the ending credits sounded quite reminiscent of a Vanilla Ice classic… Fond memories, indeed… 😛