Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT)
Thursday, 22 Mar 2007 17:59
Danatello Barnes: The fifth turtle
Directed by Kevin Munroe, out March 23rd at the cinema, starring Patrick Stewart, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ziyi Zhang, Laurence Fishburne, 90min.
In a nutshell…
Turtle power, Ninja, radical, cowabunga!
What's it all about?
The four turtles are suffering mid-life crises; after defeating Shredder they are at a bit of a loss. Leonardo has gone off on a gap year to South America to find himself, Donatello has taken an IT help desk job, Michelangelo is doing children's parties (a la Ghostbusters II) and Raphael has become a vigilante fighting petty criminals with chains. But suddenly a 3,000-year-old Donald Trump-cum-Sauron character is going to reopen a portal with another world when the stars of Keegan align. Somehow - with the help of April O'Neil and Casey Jones - they must get over their personal differences, prove brothers best fight together, take on a load of ninjas, and defeat some statues. Easy.
Who's in it?
Laurence Fishburne is the narrator with gravitas, Sarah Michelle Geller sounds light enough but tough enough to fight as April and Patrick Stewart sounds like Patrick Stewart.
As an example…
"Within hours we'll lose the city, within days America and within weeks the world," Leonardo's warning to the turtles.
Likelihood of a trip to the Oscars
The animation is not good enough for technical awards and the script is not witty enough for best animated feature. A kids' Oscar maybe.
What the others say
"Even CGI doesn't pump much life into these kung fu critters. Ultimately, the movie seems driven more by the need to keep a toy line and franchise alive than any creative inspiration," Reuters news agency.
"Turtles is impressive; the all-new turtle power is unleashed in cutting edge CGI," Entertainmentwise.
So is it any good?
I remember when the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film came out. My friend Kirsty had been to America and had seen it months before anyone else, so the wait for film was interminable as she fed us details of the action; only eased by arguments over whether they were ninjas or heroes. Heading to cinema to see the turtles' fourth cinematic outing 14 years later I wondered whether children were still bothered by the four heroes in their half shells. The ninjas, however, still seem to inspire kids and washed along with their excitement I found my seat and got ready for the adventure.
Deep down I was expecting low quality animation and a story that was as much about selling toys as telling a story, all rushed together ahead of the Transformers' return to the cinema screen later this year.
Director Kevin Munroe has cut his teeth on computer games and going through the film is a bit like going through different levels. Can we defeat the South American tyrant and get the diamond back to the girl? Can we skateboard through the sewers of New York? Can we defeat the monsters, ninjas, statues? And so on. And just like a computer game, the game-play is good, the graphics are great, but you want to skip through the bits with storyline. For the children in the audience when there was no fighting there came choruses demanding explanations to questions such as "are they friends now?" and "which one is Michelangelo?"
Despite the slight overuse of narrative, the film goes along merrily and is enjoyable. If I was a concerned parent, I might worry about the levels of violence, which no doubt stay longer than the overarching moral message of working together to bring about success. Also parents are advised to organise a pizza for tea after the movie, as the children probably won't shut up until they can have pizza and their own nunchuks. (I actually heard on eight different occasions demands to go to Pizza Hut during and after the film).
For those over the age of ten, there are a couple of jokes that hit the spot - and for the under tens there is a belching scene - but the constant action takes you along quite well and those that derive their turtle love affair from the initial comic book, the newest celluloid outing holds far truer to the original than the TV series or previous films.
TMNT is good, not excellent, fun, visually impressive and no doubt inspiring for young ninjas and respite for older ones. I think I'll get by without seeing the sequel but I quite enjoyed the guilty pleasure of seeing the turtles showing off their moves.
7/10
Danatello Barnes
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