TMNT

For those of us who grew up watching “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” remember it very fondly and hold that very close to our nostalgic memories. The animated series, which ran from 1987 to 1996, gave us a live-action trilogy, a successful video game franchise, a handful of action figures, and sadly a live concert tour before the marketing was ruined in the late 90s. However, they were brought back with another cartoon series in 2003, which Jason Zingale described as “in the shape of a new animated series that more closely resembled the Kevin Eastman/Peter Laird comic book on which the original cartoon was loosely based.” You probably would have guessed that Hollywood would eventually think of bringing our four friends back on the big screen, which they did in a CGI film that no one would have expected in 2007, simply titled “TMNT.”

This film apparently takes place after the events that transpired in the live-action trilogy, with Shredder successfully killed, and the Turtles are now doing their own separate thing. Leonardo (James Arnold Taylor, who also voiced the titular character, Tidus, in Final Fantasy X) is now in Central America after Master Splinter (the late Mako Iwamatsu, who also did voice work in the hit cartoon series, “Avatar: the Last Airbender,” and “Samurai Jack”) advised him to go there to continue his training, Donatello (Mitchell Whitfield) is now working as a computer support operator, Michelangelo (Mikey Kelley) works as a mascot for kids’ birthday parties, and Raphael (Nolan North) continues to fight crime at night as a masked vigilante known as The Nightwatcher. Sounds like a sidekick that belongs in the Batman comics, doesn’t it? Even April O’Neil (the hot Sarah Michelle Gellar, who played the titular character in the TV Show, “Buffy: the Vampire Slayer”) and Casey Jones (Chris Evans) have slowed it down, but when tech-industrialist Max Winters (Patrick Stewart) teams up with Karai (Zhang Ziyi), who is now the new leader of the Foot Clan, and begins to raise crime in the city, the Turtles get back together to give us radical action sequences.

Now I don’t think I have to say this, but the CGI Turtles looks awesome. Forget about how they looked in the animated series or even in the Jim Henson costumes from the live action trilogy, this is how I believe the Turtles should look if they were to resemble how they were drawn in the comic books. Even though they still wear their color-coded masks that were given to them in the 1987 cartoon, their appearance is far rougher than usual. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for the human characters, which don’t really look as good as the Turtles. I do think it was a smart idea for the studio to call in A-list actors like Gellar and Stewart to voice the human characters in this film, because Jason Zingale says “they're a little too cartoony.”

Unfortunately, not all of the Turtles have equal amount of screen time. Just like in the first live-action film, Raphael is the main focus (with Leonardo given plenty of screen time as the yin to Raphael’s yang), while Michelangelo and Donatello are demoted to playing secondary roles. Still, despite these little drawbacks, I don’t think this film will disappoint Turtle fans. The story is a lot darker in this film and is even reasonably complex, perhaps too complex for kids, while the same silly humor that has been a basis of the cartoon since its first episode is still there. Final verdict: it might be a little too mature for children and too silly for adults, but for teenagers and people in their twenties that grew up watching Ninja Turtles, eating their cereal, dressing up like them for school or Halloween, I think they’ll enjoy this tubular CGI film just fine.

Only complaint that I had on this movie was the plot. I heard that this film was a spin-off of the 2003 cartoon, so for people who are familiar with that cartoon could follow it just fine, but I couldn’t since I never watched the cartoon. However, that didn’t mean that I didn’t enjoy this movie, because I did. I just embraced my inner child that is still a fan of the Ninja Turtles and I loved watching this film from beginning to end. Sadly, I didn’t get to watch this really righteous movie in theaters, but I did watch it online when it was available.

Also, I just wanted to apologize for posting this late. I had gotten started on this review before I was called to do some stuff.

Now I have to pick a day to watch the latest movie, which hopefully I will before I post the finale to Ninja Turtles Month next week. Stay tuned dudes to find out what I thought about it. All there is left to say is: Cowabunga and Turtle Power.