Reviewed by Stuart O’Connor
Stars the voices of Sarah Michelle Gellar, Patrick Stewart,
Chris Evans, Mako, Ziyi Zhang, Billy West
Produced by Peter Laird and Thomas Gray
Written by Kevin Munroe
Certification US PG | UK PG
Runtime 90 minutes
Directed by Kevin Munroe
Those angst-ridden, ass-kicking avengers with attitude are back in action, dudes. More than a decade after their last big-screen outing, the Turtles return to do what they do best — fight evil, chomp pizza and raise a bit of shell. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles began life as a joke, yet went on to become one of the biggest pop culture franchises of the 80s and 90s. What started as a one-off superhero parody spawned a series of comic books, three live action films and several Saturday morning cartoons — along with bucketloads of toys, clothes, videogames, duvet-covers and other miscellaneous merchandise.
This kickstart to the franchise — in brilliant CGI — is set some time after the three live-action films. Their mortal enemy, Foot Clan leader Shredder, is dead and sibling rivalry has seen the team split up and go their separate ways. Leonardo is in South America, where Splinter has sent him to train and become a better leader; Donatello works on a computer support phoneline; Michalangelo entertains at kids’ parties wearing a fake “turtle” suit; and Raphael has become a crime-fighting vigilante, The NIghtwatcher. But the guys are forced to team up again when industrialist Max Winters (voiced by Stewart) threatens the city by raising up an army of ancient monsters. With their old allies April O’Neill (Gellar) and Casey Jones (Evans) by their sides, the Turtles not only have to deal with these nasty new monsters, but also with their old foes, the Foot clan, now led by Karai (Zhang).
To be honest, I haven’t seen a reinvention like this since Batman Begins. Gone is the dumbing down of the Saturday morning cartoons. Back comes some of the darkness, angst and humour of Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird’s original creation. There’s genuine warmth, depth to all the characters (although Donatello and Michaelangelo don’t get an awful lot to do), good-natured humour and enough action to teach Bryan Singer a thing or two about making an action film. And the CGI? Well, this mob could give the lovely folk over a Pixar a run for their money. There’s a scene halfway through the movie where it starts raining; the water, when it hits the characters, acts just as you’d expect water to act in the real world. Until now, I had never seen CGI that good. TMNT brings us back the Turtles as they were meant to be. And it’s great to have those little green dudes back.
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SECOND OPINION | Neil Davey: After their previous run in the UK — under the banner of Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles in case, God forbid, children were given violent ideas by the use of the “n” word — it seemed that the TMNT had been written off as another one of those good comic book ideas let down by the mass market. When Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman created the original concept in 1984, the Ninja Turtles were a tongue-in-cheek spoof of the superhero genre, with all those “bitten by a radioactive gerbil” origins. They took four dumped pets in the New York sewers, added some radioactivity, a rat sensei and came up with the famed justice-loving, martial arts practicing titular reptiles. When the mainstream came along, decided that there was more money in the kids’ market and, while Eastman and Laird no doubt did very nicely out of the rights and I’ll happily admit a soft-spot for the first movie, the original concept felt cleaned up and dumbed down for the masses. Cue a few years of glory… and then a lot of TMNT merchandise in the bargain bins.
The idea of a new film then would probably not feature very highly on many people’s lists of “things I’d like to see this year”. Which explains why we’re the film going public and other people are producers. Because, under the guidance of Kevin Munroe, TMNT: a) redefines CGI; b) gives the Turtles back their sense of purpose; and c) rocks. The characters are well drawn, the relationships are not predictable and there’s some surprising depth to proceedings. After a highly efficient bit of set-up, a superbly-handled — and very funny — reminder of who’s who, TMNT hits a breakneck pace and rarely lets up. The result is stupidly exciting with some of the greatest animation yet seen on the big screen. Seriously, the quality of the CGI could see TMNT nick the Animated Feature Oscar next year. It really is that good. Confounding all — admittedly low — expectations, this is a little cracker that delivers on every possible level. I said it before, I’ll say it again: TMNT rocks.
