TMNT Return for New Audience

The new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, written by creators Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, is truer to the comics and movie franchises than to its campy cartoon counterpart. Nevertheless, the fact that is filmed completely in CGI may throw some viewers off.

The story picks up where the live-action movies left off. Leonardo has been in Central America, honing his skills, while the rest of his mutant turtle brothers attempt to cope with his absence in New York. As an ancient emperor assembles a powerful army and joins forces with the insidious Foot Clan, Leo returns to America to once again lead the Turtles as a crime-fighting team.

It's true that many fans will be disappointed by the choice to use computer generated graphics instead of live actors, however, the producers have stated that the action sequences required for this film would have been outrageously expensive if filmed in live action, and that no studios were willing to pick it up for production. As a CGI movie, however, these costs were greatly reduced. So, instead of not doing a new TMNT film all together, they went with CGI. Believe me, though, the CGI looks good. There are many sequences that--to my eyes--could have have been guys in rubber suits just like the originals. A particularly excellent fighting scene in the rain comes to mind.

All our familiar characters are there, and most are instantly recognizable. A few changes have been made, however. April is no longer the token damsel-in-distress. In this movie, she's given up her day job as a reporter and trains as a martial artist at home. For the first time, she becomes a valuable fighting member of the TMNT team. Splinter, the Turtles' ninja master and father figure, has been given a very different sounding voice that can be distracting at times.

While the story of TMNT itself is nothing special, it serves as a decent catalyst for fantastic action sequences and as a backdrop for the the more important elements of drama between brothers and character development. TMNT is a great movie for fans of the franchise, and may just revive it enough to become embedded once again into the cultural consciousness of a generation. B+