Review of TMNT (2007) by Drake T — 28 May 2011

This movie gets too much flak from fans of the old trilogy. I'll say it now before anything else, the old movies were not good, in fact, they were embarrassing masses of tactless gag humor.

This TMNT installment did a lot of things right, for one the tension between Ralph and Leo? Beautiful. In fact the drama between the brothers was probably the highlight of the film that all previous installments failed to achieve. Secondly? Thank god they got rid of those clunky live-action suits. As a kid it always bugged me how they never moved like ninjas in the previous movies, it made the action anything but fun. Finally the art direction, I love the design of the turtles and how they're not just a derivative of the live action look; very sleek and stylized.

With all that said it makes you wonder why this warrants 34% on RT, well, it's the witless outdated humor for one. Michaelangelo is a goof-ball but he's rarely funny and the gags/one-liners sing the same tone throughout the movie.

Then there's the premise. It's not necessarily bad in the sense of child-media. Magical immortal warriors that want to conquer the world? Sure I've seen similar ideas that kids gobble up in an instant but I guess that's the problem here, it just doesn't click with enough complexities and maturity that older fans and critics are probably looking for.

All in all, a good ride for a TMNT movie, it just spirals into senseless stupidity in the final act that you should really just watch for the action sequences. The story leaves much to be desired, hopefully they'll remedy that situation next time around.