Just Saw a Movie: TMNT
(GRADE: C-)
No, I'm serious.
See, the desire for nostalgia was overwhelming, even against the advice of 50 people whose opinions, by convention, are supposed to mean something.
And I could see what they were saying. Somebody keeps trying to bring back the glorious Cowabunga phenomenon that was the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and I'd like to think it was for more than just financial ambitions. Despite the skepticism I share with other recovering TMNT addicts, it'd be nice to witness something new that does justice to the Turtles, not necessarily for the sake of popular resurgence, but so we can fondly recall the kung-fu grip that Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, and Michaelangelo had on our prepubescent development.
That didn't happen this week, but oh well. This new movie, esoterically titled TMNT, is a soulless CG exercise that may have more reason for being than, say, Garfield 2: A Tail of Two Kitties, but I'll be damned if that ain't sayin' much.
In terms of style, TMNT falls somewhere between the surprising maturity of the live-action movies (not to mention the original comics) and the infectious goofiness of the late 80's/early 90's cartoon show. It stretches toward both appeals, and failing to grasp either end, the whole film feeling generic overall.
It opens promisingly, though, with the Turtles having drifted apart after vanquishing their nemesis, Shredder (and his empty threats of ever making turtle soup). The brothers each find some new occupation, like Donatello's frustrating job in tech support. The real catalyst to the story is Leonardo's return from Latin America, where he single-handedly trashed Colombian drug lords as part of his leadership training. The dialogue takes great pains to inform you that Leonardo is the leader, that he leads, and that the brothers will have to become close again if he can ever do his leading.
But trouble is brewing. Corporate magnate Bruce Wayne, er, Max Winters (voiced by Patrick Stewart), is the source of mayhem in this Turtles adventure. Cursed with immortality, he is collecting monsters -- 13 of them, of course-- which will unleash a mysterious magic that will atone for his ancient transgressions. But as well you know, mysterious magic is not to be tolerated, especially when it culminates in firing a gigantic beam out of a skyscraper near the climax.
Still, Winters takes care of business: even though the 13 monsters came snarling into this world from Central America 3,000 years ago, they are all found in New York, for the sake of plot movement, with no difficulty whatsoever.
So the turtles... I'm sorry--
(*swallows two aspirin*)
Okay, so the turtles get in this mess after Leonardo gets kidnapped by Winters' newly-revived compadres, and it's time to kick some shell, as it were.
When it comes to Turtles adventures, ridiculousness is accepted as a franchise convention, but there's a constant, nagging feeling that TMNT wants you to take its proceedings very seriously. Which is a shame, and matters are made worse by the script's lack of anything resembling laugh-out-loud humor. If nothing else, it would have been nice to see more winking self-parody (like Donatello's IT job) without it stealing these gags from the opening of Ghostbusters II.
So does the CG work? Its cheap presentation is the other reason TMNT feels like an overlong Saturday morning cartoon, sorry to say. The direction, though, particularly in the action scenes, is quite inspired. While most of the film is forgettable, the rainy rooftop faceoff between Leonardo and Raphael is engrossing to the point that you temporarily forget it's even computer generated.
Now when you ask people who their favorite turtle was, the results tend to be diffuse (unless the poll is taken on a computer geek site such as that one, then you can figure which one takes top honors there). So a Turtles movie works best when having all four heroes share the spotlight.
Trouble is, the plot obsesses over its Leo/Raph "leadership" feud , and the other two turtles are left with pathetically diminished roles: Donatello occasionally employs his smarts to inform everyone of some gee-whiz plot point calculation, and Michaelangelo pops up to deliver brain-hemorrhagingly bad jokes. His presence is especially unwelcome. Roughly half the fanboys will feel betrayed by this imbalance in screen time for the turtles, and (sniff) I know I did.
Some of the side characters have more developed roles, like April and Casey Jones, the Turtles' human allies. April's voice, for one, has a real "who is that?" quality, and then you find out it's Sarah Michelle Gellar. Besides that, there's nothing memorable concerning the voice acting, which includes Patrick Stewart and Kevin Smith in his throwaway cameo. And was that really Laurence Fishburne narrating the story? Yes it was, and I'm afraid that's the most engrossing revelation in the TMNT experience.
Labels: movie review, nostalgia
posted by pseudoSwashbuckler @ 3:17 PM
2 Comments
2 Comments:
Surprising maturity of the live action movies? I think the only reason you could possibly think something like that is because the last time you bore witness to the turtle phenomenon you were too small to correctly spell mature.
I actually recently watched the third turtles movie when I discovered it had entered Sci Fi’s late night o’ crap rotation, and really being little more then a particularly tall and burly 7 year old I was suckered in. The whole experience was actually horrendously depressing because it took a cherished childhood memory smashed it, spit on it, and buried it, before digging it up again so it could urinate on it and rebury the thing. The entire thing was simply a series of jokes so bad I can’t even accurately refer to them as cartoonish. Even the fighting sequences consist of such devastating maneuvers as wet willies, wedgies, and casually handing your weapons to someone so you can punch them in the face. But if you need a concrete example I offer you this, confused, boxer-clad samurais loose in New York. Need I say more?
And let’s not forget in the second movie the climatic fight with the horribly goofy Rahzar and Tokka occurs in a nightclub that just happens to be blessed with a performance by Vanilla Ice, who upon witnessing the battle breaks into a “improvised” rap about the turtles entitled “Go Ninja, Go Ninja, GO!” Worse yet, upon the Turtle’s victory they get invited up on stage to dance with the Vanilla One. Mature indeed.
I might be willing to give you the first movie though, just because despite small things like the turtle’s first words being “Pizza!” and “Radical, radical, radical!” it still manages to maintain, at the very least, a teenage feel throughout. Moreover, I count it as a small classic, not for any particular movie magic it happens to contain, but simply because even today, more then fifteen years after it’s release, you’re still liable to hear people randomly spew out some of the movie’s better quotes. Coincidently, just a few days ago when a friend asked me about cricket a random passerby interjected Ralph's line, “Cricket? Nobody understands cricket. You gotta know what a crumpet is to understand cricket.”
All that being said however, I return to my earlier admission of my body maturing while my head failed to, and it leads me to ask the following question; did this movie, as with all the others before it, properly end with Splinter “making a funny?”
The two live-action sequels aren't so much a part of my memories as the original, and for your cited reasons, you'll agree that's a good thing. Because of that, though, the first movie represents the whole trilogy for me, which creates no small misunderstanding when communicated to others.
And sure, when I was a tyke, the first TMNT movie especially struck me as iconoclastic to the kiddie cartoon image (also considering that it drew so much from the comic books). Among other surprises, a moment joyfully lodged in my mind is Raphael's enraged, city-rattling "DAAAAAAAAAMMMMN!!!"
In this CG outing, though, Splinter does not make a funny. Nobody does, really.
P.S. Who's "Ralph?"
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