When I first heard that they were making a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, I was hesitant. My generation had, without a doubt, the best cartoons, ever. The original TMNT was arguably the best among these. It was definitely my favorite. I assume that the cartoons of today are so terrible, because animators are still in schock at the grandeur of the original TMNT. Rightfully so. When I heard a few years back that someone had resurrected the cartoon for the new generation of youngsters, I was indifferent. It's good that they get to experience the turtles, but is it really the turtles?
The new TMNT movie is animated in the vein of the resurrected tv series. It is highly stylized and typical of todays acute angled and quick moving characters that can be found in almost every cartoon. This is the source of my hesitation. I feared that this would transcend to the characters themselves who I had come to know so well through my childhood.
Luckily my fears were assuaged and I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. The animation is hip and modern, but it works well with the turtles and much unlike the live action TMNT movies, each turtle has their own look, just as I had remembered them. The jokes aren't necessarily recycled or rehashed, but reworked perfectly. I spent a lot of hours on the TMNT arcade games and the one-liners that the turtles would spout every time they were hit have become engrained in my mind. I may be mistaken, but I think the writers of this movie worked every single one of those one-liners into the script and they all worked great. They even turned one of them into a hilarious 'your mom' joke.
Animation and quips aside, the story is another story. I was mainly worried that I would have to sit through a whole new TMNT storyline that had sprung out of the new cartoon. Fortunately, old and new turtle fans alike will enjoy this one. The story picks up at a point where the turtles have progressed in time just as much as the original fans have. However, the turtles themselves follow rule #1 of cartoons; they never age. Splinter has sent Leonardo to South America in order to become a better leader. Donatello is an on-the-phone computer tech support guy. Michaelangelo is a party entertainer who wears a giant turlte suit. And Raphael is a night vigilante who is estranged from the others because he can't understand how they can just obey Splinter and not fight crime anymore. I thought it was awesome. It was like reuniting with long lost friends who are the funniest people I knew. There is some amazing skateboarding animation with Michaelangelo and the city animation is also pretty impressive.
Things go downhill once the story nears the ending. Essentially the turtles must break a 3,000 year old curse, but they don't do it by themselves. They seem outmatched and outnumbered. That is until, all of a sudden, they aren't. The end asks the filmgoer to accept a lot. I don't mean this just in the traditional sense of progression of story, but also asking traditional TMNT fans to accept some things that would have never have happened in the original cartoon. The end also feels very rushed. As if they had 20 more minutes of story planned out, but just ran out of money and wrapped it up in the most simplistic way possible. Luckily Michaelangelo saves it with one last great joke. He was always my favorite.
Regardless of all that, I laughed almost the whole way through and left the theater very pleased. I think that was the first time in a long time that I felt I had gotten my money's worth out of a movie going experience.
