Once upon a time there was another movie called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I saw that one, not because I was a fan (I was probably in my early twenties at that time), but because I had a really stupid boyfriend with a younger brother and I was forced.
Since I had already seen one movie about the Ninja Turtles I was vaguely familiar with their background. But since that’s a part of my life that I’ve been trying to repress I don’t remember very much. I do know that the Turtles live in the sewer, that they’re mutants and that they have a leader/friend/father named Splinter. That’s all I remember. You’d think that the people who made the latest version, TMNT, would refresh our memories. They didn’t.
The movie begins in an ancient time in South America. A fierce warrior learns how to open another dimension and thinks this will enhance his butt-kicking power. What he doesn’t realize is that the power he unleashes lets loose a bevy of monsters, turns his army to stone and makes him immortal.
Fast forward to present day. Ninja Turtle Leonardo is in the jungle having finished his “training” a year earlier. He was sent there to become a better leader, but he doesn’t think he’s quite there yet and doesn’t want to return home to New York.
Meanwhile Leonardo’s brothers, Michelangelo, Donatello, and Raphael try unsuccessfully to hold it together back home. They work a series of humdrum jobs (IT tech, party favor and vigilante, respectively) and await Leonardo’s return. Friends April and Casey are also pining away for him.
Meanwhile again, zillionaire Maximillian J. Winters collects ancient stone warrior statues (hmmmm…) and begins to prepare for something big that’s going to happen in the next couple of days. But first he has to round up a bevy of monsters (hmmmm…). A band of not-so-merry ninjas sign on to help him.
About three seconds into this movie I was asking a whole lot of questions. Here, I’ll list them for you:
What exactly is going on with this ancient warrior?
Why did Leonardo get sent away for training? What was wrong with him in the first place?
How did the Mutant Ninja Turtles get to be Mutant Ninja Turtles again and why do they hide in the sewer?
How did they hook up with Splinter?
What exactly is Splinter? (I thought he was a squirrel, but then I remembered that he was a rat.)
What is April and Casey’s interest here? And are they LIVING TOGETHER? Isn’t this a family movie?
What’s up with the band of not-so-merry ninjas?
And just who are the good guys and who are the bad guys?
About halfway into the movie I turned to ask AEYOB a question.
“Do you understand any of this?” I asked.
“No,” he said. I don’t think he cared though.
Sheesh. A few minutes of narrative explanation in the beginning would have wrapped up most of these issues. Can I get a few minutes of narrative explanation? A couple of my co-workers told me that I probably had to watch the cartoon to really get it. Now they tell me.
I suppose if you have kids that do watch the cartoon they might enjoy this. I think they could have done a better job though, seeing as how they had a few big names (Kevin Smith, Patrick Stewart, Lawrence Fishburn, Sarah Michelle Gellar) doing the voices. I believe that the animation was done by the same people who did Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius. I liked that movie and I also like the TV show. It’s very clever. You should watch it.
Oh well. I guess at the end of the day TMNT wasn’t all that bad. I’ll tell you one thing, it beats Are We Done Yet.
Wendy R., Movie Correspondent:
W endy’s column, “Family Flix“, published every Friday to Gather Essentials: Movies is your guide to family friendly movies, DVD’s, classics and new releases. Wendy R. is a mother of two and a film buff. All of her films are road-tested by an actual eight-year-old boy (AEYOB).You can find all of Wendy’s Family Flix columns at http://gather.com/familyflix.
Keep up with Wendy’s other postings and Gather activity by joining his Gather network -- just click here grev3.gather.com and select the orange “Connect” button on the left-hand side of the page
You’ll find Wendy and other Movie Correspondents, plus celebrity content and plenty of other movie buffs at Movies.gather.com
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Comments: 26
I am still waiting to see this, of course I have a fill in of the blanks. The kids have followed it for years.
Divine Ms R
Birdie, I reviewed both of those. Check it out if you get a chance.
Nic, I agree with you about the parents I guess. It just seemed a little strange.
To get the back story and entertain the kids, order the TMNT cartoons from the library. Fun to watch and informative, too.
Namaste, Wayne
I remember TMNT before they became the phenomena they became. Believe it or not, they began as a pen and ink underground comic. They were a lot less "wholesome" in those first books. The characters in the originals were more adult oriented than the mass produced children's cartoon they became. I preferred the grown up verson myself and thought it was a shame they were "dumbed down" for mass appeal.
Laird and Eastman created the underground, black & white TMNT long before the colorized kid-friendly franchise appeared. The original was a riff on the story of Daredevil, the blind crimefighter: Matt Murdock was your average nice-guy lawyer walking casually down an alley when a truck filled with some radioactive chemicals came roaring down the street and straight toward a blind man. Murdock leapt heroically forward to save the blind man's life, but was himself injured by the truck (thus losing his sight) but also contaminated by the radioactive cargo (thus developing the ultra-powerful other senses... whereby he can identify people by their signature heartbeats, and tell if they're lying by their pulse rates, etc.)
Thus, the turtles were recently-purchased by a small boy navigating that same alleyway, and in the chaos, he trips and falls, shattering the glass bowl of turtles. These four turtles plummet down the sewer drain, where radioactive cargo drips onto them and a nearby blind rat.
Murdock is trained by the blind martial arts master Stick. The turtles are trained by the blind rat martial arts master, Splinter.
And surely none of this helps comprehend the movie. The fact is, if the movie cannot tell its own story, it has failed its audience.
Dannielle, I must say I'm very impressed with your knowledge of the Ninja Turtles. But you're right, I think this movie failed.
I KNEW we were kindred spirits! Thanks for adding the background.
I wish I still had those first comics. To be honest, I made a killing selling them about 15 years ago, during the heyday of TMNT, I think I got $250 each for the individual series in which each character had it's own issue. I hated to get rid of them, but we needed the money at the time, and the market was more than ripe.
Donna and Dannielle. I hate you.
I'm so kidding
I'm so tired
I'm in desperate need of coffee.
Ok so....ummmm "what the D's said" will have to suffice in my comment.
(second thought on my first thought, I didn't mean it as curt as it may have sounded. I have the hardest time conveying tongue in cheek)
When I first saw that this was coming out my first thought was,
Oh great a bunch of 3 year old boys are going to be out on the playground and pushing each other around and kicking each other and playing TMNT and they are going to want me to get them to intervene in the media induced challenging behavior