'TMNT' - The Battle For Consistency
By: Tim - aurora - Dunn

The latest movie incarnation of the decades old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ('TMNT') finds the small family of four heroes in a half shell struggling with mundane life after Shredder. Master Splinter has sent Leonardo off to better prepare himself as leader of their little ninja band. After a year in the Central American jungles playing hero, Leonardo runs into April who is out on a job assignment. She tells Leonardo of the ailing status of the once united brothers.

Bake home in the sewers of New York Raphael is totally pissed at the disappearance of Leonardo and has taken to vigilante work as the Night Watcher. Donatello has fallen into the nightmarish job of being a computer support services technician. Michelangelo dresses up as a huge foam version of himself for birthday party entertainment for kids.

When Leonardo returns to New York, Master Splinter is happy to have his family back together. He charges Leonardo to reunite the brothers into a single fighting force once again. He also commands them to not fight above the surface till they're fighting as one. Well knowing the Turtles, that lasts about as long as it took Splinter to finish the sentence as Raphael goes steaming out. Moments later they are above ground, fighting, poorly too since they are not united and thus getting their shells kicked in. But what they learn is that the city has big hairy monsters and the evil Footclan is back in town.

The secondary story, which should have been more fore-front then the reuniting story, after all this was made for kids who want to see ninja action, is based on an ancient legendary warrior. Three thousand years ago this warrior and his four generals marched forth to conquer the world with an invincible army. Winters, the leader of the warrior army finds a portal to another dimension and sought to open it. In doing so he became immortal but at the price of unleashing thirteen monsters into the world and his four generals being turned to stone. Jump ahead to today where we find Winters hiring April to find the four stone generals for him, hence the reason for her being in the jungle when she runs into Leonardo. Winters plan, surprisingly is not to regain his generals and army to conquer the world but instead to undo the wrongs he created.

The story is cut into two almost perfectly clean pieces with poor interaction between the two. More time is spent on the issues between Raphael and Leonardo then anything else in the movie. This is a Ninja Turtle movie we want to see action and a lot of it. Don't get me wrong we see some decent action but it’s lean on the cheese with few juicy toppings. Speaking of which we miss out on most of the great things that has made more then one generation of kids to fall in love with TMNT. We have one short skateboarding scene. We see lots of pizza boxes but where’s the pizza? Where’s the fun playing between them, where’s that relationship between the Turtles and April and Casey? Most of the things we fell in love with, with our Turtle heroes seems to have hidden in their shell most of this movie.

Then there was the movie style. This time it was all out 3D CG work. If you think there’s a lack of consistency between what we loved with the Turtles and what we get in the movie then the CG consistency sinks to the slimiest, stinkiest layers of the underground sewers. There are times when the animation, surfacing and effects are truly worth while and enjoyable but seconds later it falls flat on its face. Some parts of this movie excels greatly, in particular the rain soaked battle between Leonardo and Raphael. To the effects artists that worked on that scene I bow to you! To the lip synch artists, well I'll be nice and not say anything at all other then stare the characters in the eyes and ignore the lips, you'll find the movie much more enjoyable that way.

To the editors of this movie, hey you may have been contracted to do only a 90 minute movie but you should have cut out a lot of the family issue scenes and spent that time more wisely on the final scenes. It was that conflict with the Footclan, monsters, Winters and his rebellious stone generals that should be the mainstay of this story not a sidebar. When the turtles were fighting the story was fun, the animation smooth(er), the backgrounds enjoyable and the effects stunning. When not fighting, well then everything took a nose dive.

A lot of us grew up with TMNT, I was already grown up but still enjoyed them. We had hopes of sharing this small treasure from our childhood with our kids but I fear the previews for Spiderman3 and HarryPotter5 will be what they remember most the next day. Surely if we here ‘Cowabunga Dudes’ flying forth from the lips of kids it will be because they watch the latest animated adventures on TV or saw it in our old comics. There was little room for some great Cowabunga action in this movie.

Conclusion:
This movie suffered greatly in CG and animation consistency as well as maintaining all the great things that made the Turtles a worldwide mega-phenomenon. It’s a nice movie to take the kids to but it by itself, will not resurrect the huge following it once had. The end of the movie all but promises another film coming soon, I just hope that if it’s true that the writers go back to the old comics to remind them of who the Turtles are character wise. I also hope the artists get sent by Master Splinter to school to better prepare them for the tasks demanded of them.

Ratings:

IMDB Film Rating: No ratings at the time of this writing

- For a movie going experience I give it: 2.5 out of 5 stars.
It was fun to see the Turtles back in action but if it were not for the fight scene between Leonardo and Raphael I would have been rated lower.

- For a technical piece of CG and VFX work I give it: 2.5 out of 5 stars.
Again it was the Leonardo/Raphael fight scene that saved this movie for me.

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