TMNT (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) - Review

TMNT (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) Movie Poster

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Length: 87 min

Rated: PG

Distributor: Warner Bros and Weinstein

Release Date: 2007-03-23

Starring: VOICES: Ziyi Zhang (Karai), Sara Michelle Gellar (April), Chris Evans (Casey Jones), Kevin Smith, Patrick Stewart

Directed by Kevin Munroe

Produced by Thomas K. Gray, Galen Walker

Written by Kevin Munroe

Visit the movie's Official Site!

Reviewed by Josh Tyler : 2007-03-19 01:38:14

Anyone who was a kid around the time the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles first became popular has to be excited about TMNT. The Turtles represent everything that’s good about the inner child most men have lurking deep down inside them (kept right next to our secret desire to possess our very own robot pal), and having them back on screen is a good thing. Or at least it should be. Here’s the thing: You’ve grown up. The Turtles haven’t. Sure the rubber suits are gone and they’ve been redone with fancy new computer generated technology, but that hasn’t stopped them from becoming, well, dull.

First, let’s talk about what director Kevin Monroe has done right in bringing the ninja turtles back. The film kicks off right where all the previous, rubber-suit versions left off. There’s no lame attempt at a reboot and this isn’t another pathetic prequel. Thank god for that. The lives of the Ninja Turtles have continued onward in a straight line, and now that they’ve defeated all their arch-enemies they’ve sort of gone under ground. Well, more under ground than usual. Leonardo is off in South America training to be a leader at the behest of Master Splinter. In his absence, his brothers have fallen apart. Donatello has flushed his brains down the toilet and taken a job as a tech support phone operator. Michelangelo, in an effort to get out in the world, runs a kids entertainment company and spends his days pretending to be a guy in a turtle costume at children’s birthday parties. Raphael has gone all Batman, and has taken up a career as a masked vigilante who stalks the streets of New York using fear and terror to fight crime rather than the more passive ninja techniques taught by Master Splinter. And Splinter, well he hates to miss his stories.

The film is only 87 minutes long, so it’s kind of surprising the amount of time Munroe spends setting up all of this. Actually, it gets to be a bit excessive. At least half of the movie is exposition, it takes forever to get to the point of the film, which is saving the world from a pretty hokey plot device in which an immortal supervillain is opening a dimensional portal that lets nasty creatures loose on the planet at an alarming rate. This is of course, illustrated by the obligatory red fog spreading over the world map always used whenever there’s a vague threat to planet earth. Once the movie does get to the point, the script ends up being nothing but a series of dead ends.

For instance, the primary subplot of TMNT revolves around Leonardo’s quest to become a better leader in order to reunite the Turtles family. The entire movie is wasted pursuing Leonardo’s eventual rise as an uber-leader, and in the end it never happens. At some point the team stops bickering and starts beating things up together, but there’s never that moment where Leonardo takes charge and shows off his snazzy new leadership skills. Even the final fight is disappointing. After an entire movie building towards a penultimate battle when the Ninja Turtles come together to kick amazing amounts of ass, you’d expect the finale to be something pretty cool. Well nope. There is a fight, but only some of it happens on camera and what does happen is pretty pedestrian. It’s mostly the Turtles biding their time against enemies that can’t be defeated, while they wait around for someone else to come up with some hocus pocus plot device to magically solve their problems.

The failure of the film to really wow me with a big fight scene is particularly disappointing. Honestly, anyone who has seen anything involving the Turtles before should know what they’re getting into with the script. The Ninja Turtles aren’t supposed to be smart cinema. But you’d hope, that finally freed from the bonds of bad foam costumes they’d use the limitless world of CGI to blow the audience away with some really incredible ninja fighting stuff. Sorry, not so much. The fight scenes built into the script just don’t do much to take advantage of the freedom afforded TMNT by its new medium, and besides the film is mixed bag visually. The Turtles themselves look pretty good, but the movie’s attempts at animating human characters are disastrous. The animation there is awkward and flat out crappy, especially in contrast with how cool some of the monsters and gritty, dark cityscapes look.

In the end, the thing that saved the other Ninja Turtles movies was being funny. Perhaps your kids will find this new one just as hilarious as we did when we were their age watching the originals in our feetie pajamas, but you won’t. The gags are few and far between and without even that to inject some life into this limp script, TMNT is a bland, plain cheese when it should be a supreme with extra anchovies. I’m ready and willing to admit however, that I may simply have passed the Turtles by. I’ve outgrown them. We’ve outgrown them. There was an opportunity here to either resurrect the nostalgia that once made them great or re-introduce the Turtles to a new generation of kids. TMNT fails to do the former and you'll have to ask your kids whether or not it does the latter. Somehow I doubt it. There are one or two fun moments scattered throughout the film, but for the most part it’s a random, impersonal, half-hearted attempt.

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Note: This website is not intended for use by minors. The views expressed in this comments section are not necessarily our own. Comments that we deem to be poorly worded, off topic, or threatening will not be published. For free, uncensored discussion visit our forum.

Colin Says:
March 19th, 2007 at 09:44
Dude, I gotta say, in your review, you completley missed the point of the movie.

The monster stuff was the sideplot. The entire plot of the movie was Splinter trying to hold the family together. The Turtles have been drifting apart as a whole, and the movie revolves around them coming together.

Also, it's about the tension between Leo and Raph, the movie isn't about Leo becoming stronger, it's about Leo coming back home after a year expecting his brothers to follow his command again, and Raph feeling jealous and angry and Leo's high and mighty attitude.

You present a fair review, even though I don't agree on what you said about the animation, I just wanted to point that out.

And you spelled Raphael wrong.

*BTW, if I've already posted this, I apologize, I don't know if the first one went through.

Josh T Says:
March 19th, 2007 at 16:23
>>>The monster stuff was the sideplot. The entire plot of the movie was Splinter trying to hold the family together. The Turtles have been drifting apart as a whole, and the movie revolves around them coming together.

No, the Monster stuff is the focus of the film's activities. The movie revolves around them coming together TO FIGHT MONSTERS. That's the story's ultimate goal. The Turtles coming together as a family is a major subplot, and I addressed it. It doesn't work any better than the Monster plot. It's a dead end with no payoff. Not that it really matters which is the main narrative of the movie. They both play an important part, and it's splitting hairs to argue about it.

>>>>And you spelled Raphael wrong.

No I didn't.

Henrik Says:
March 19th, 2007 at 23:32
I for one think it's nice to see a light-hearted action movie, that focuses on characters instead of plot. All action movies have ridiculous plots.

I think they did an excellent job, keeping the archetypical turtle characters, but kick the whole thing up a notch, so the movie actually does something with them. It doesn't just show it in 2bit dialogue here and there, it actually revolves around it.

This was an excellent movie - but I really do feel this review missed alot of it, because you were too concerned with the plot of the movie. Tell a story. Get to the point. Show us why you did this before, otherwise I can't figure out what it meant! Don't ever let something remotely surprising and/or 'realistic' get in the way of your arcs that need to be spelled out, and have their specific moments, because you're going to lose the audience if they aren't fed with a spoon.

And while I do appreciate your disgust with people refusing to grow up, I really think this is the wrong movie to use as an example, since it is not PG-13. It doesn't have people coming out saying "This is not a toy movie!" etc. etc. It's obviously a kid's movie, directed at kids. I think it's a damn good one at that.

Josh T Says:
March 19th, 2007 at 23:34
Disgust with people refusing to grow up? Where did you read that? Not in my review.

As for the rest, I'm not sure if you're making a case for or against the movie. You don't seem so certain yourself. Actually, most of what you said about it makes it sound a hundred times worse than anything I said.

You're really being too hard on it.

Henrik Says:
March 20th, 2007 at 16:58
Saying a movie focuses on character instead of plot is making it sound bad?

The monster plot of the movie is just a catalyst. The story is about the characters, not about some random arbitrary threat and some flashy action scenes, which it seems was all you were looking for. Mortal Kombat may be more what you were looking for.

Billiam Says:
March 20th, 2007 at 21:41
I agree with you, Josh. The set-up was too long and confusing, Leonardo's "leadership training" was non-existent, and there wasn't enough fun, like in the first movie. BUT.... I attended an East Coast screening. Half the audience was 8-10 year olds, the other half parents. While there were only three laugh-out-load moments, the kids were on the edge of their seats the entire time. While I'm sure that littler kids would be fidgety, the 8-10s and adults were absorbed by the beautiful CGI, and bought into the world, despite the plot flaws that you mentioned. Maybe the fact that the movie has a serious film noir feel is the ultimate joke from Laird and Eastman!

jimmy Says:
March 22nd, 2007 at 00:14
Too bad they couldn't have made this a more of an adult type of movie. Leonardo needs to drive his blade into his enemy! Rapheal needs to jam those sies into skulls! Yes! That is how it should be!

Why can't we have an all animated movie like this but with true gore? Is animation only for kids? I would love to see heads smashing like melons when donatelo smashes his staff against his enemies face. If their speed and skills are exagerrated then the gore should be too, that way they will match together and form one of the best computer animated movies ever!

I was young and so into ninja turtles when they were at their peek. I want to see leondardos blades slice someone skull clean off from the cheeks up and see the brains! To do all this with high-def computer animation would look so freaking awesome. Please Hollywood, make an all computer animation movie about ninjas with extreme speed and killing skills and show us what it would truly look like when they fight! Make the thing R rated. Adults will want to still see it even though it's computer animated, believe me.

Marlena Says:
March 22nd, 2007 at 18:39
Your review hit home, as i'm also looking forward to seeing this flick. Anytime you write something for a specific audience you risk ostracizing the others. But i have to tell you i AM the audience you're writing this review for.

Many of us liked the Dark side of the turtles. I had a complete separate love for what Jim Henson did, which was ground breaking at the time.

But after this many versions of the comic, cartoon, films, etc... It's always going to suck that they never took the opportunity to highlight the potential depth and passion many of us have seen glimpses of.

Back in the Day... getting to see young mutated males w/ ninja skills was Refreshing. I dare call them ahead of their time because EVERYTHING THE TURTLES WERE DOING has become the mainstream;

Ninjas, Comics, Pop Culture References, Mutants, Brotherhoods, etc... This is all huge now. Your average teenager TODAY is more like the TMNT than they were when i was growing up.

So i'm going to do what you did, and do my best to enjoy it because damn they've been teasing us w/ this idea of a digital film for so long.

But I hope your readers will forgive folks like you and I who hoped this modern version would FINALLY give the kind of voice to the Turtles we hoped they would.

radically yours,
m

christina Says:
March 25th, 2007 at 17:03
to be honest after the bout of hard core action movies with loads of blood and gore have hit the cinema recently it was nice to go and enjoy a light hearted action. i really liked the movie all the characters were as i remembered from growing up with them. i do think the aspects of your review hold true like some of the animation being a bit dodgy but CGI is still in its early days.
i found a plesant little film, having a serious plot broken up every now and again by a little joke.

Mike Says:
March 26th, 2007 at 15:16
Contrived plots, dodgy scripts? Do any of you haters remember the originals? What else do you expect from TMNT? For those of us who grew up with the cartoon series and were in the target age demographic when the live action films were released, we have too much invested in the franchise. This isn't TMNT III, nor is it our wildest 12 year old fantasies come to fruition. It is simply a good fun movie. I hope this movie does well enough for a few more. It felt like I was getting reintroduced to some old friends. Times have changed, we've changed so it felt nice to take the time to settle into a new incarnation. Munroe did a good job giving me just enough to rekindle my inner 10 year old, as well as entertaining the current generation.

christina Says:
March 28th, 2007 at 08:07
good on ya mike i like to see that someone else likes the film and agrees that you should change with times. i would like to say that i liked it so much im going to see it again with a load of friends some of which went to see it with me the first time! a great movie to break up the day of being a hard working student.

Justin B. Says:
March 28th, 2007 at 14:39
OK Josh I have a big problem with something you put in your review
"TMNT is a bland, plain cheese when it should be a supreme with extra anchovies."
if you are any sort of fan of the turtles yo would know that the turtles will NEVER and i mean NEVER PAY FOR A PIZZA WITH ANCHOVIES ON IT!
try watching the original movies again
anchovies are the @$$hole of the pizza universe

Josh T Says:
March 28th, 2007 at 14:41
That's the best you can up with? Attacking my choice of pizza topics?

Well alright then. This is an abbreviation which indicates that I'm now laughing -> LOL

Jason Says:
April 1st, 2007 at 18:54
they ate anchovies in the cartoon...

Derico Says:
April 2nd, 2007 at 02:17
Although I must say there were numerous parts where the dialogue was poor, this was a genuinely good movie; what's more, it was a good TMNT movie. The CGI was phenominal, it succeeded in making the movie look like a 3D comic; had they wanted it to look like monsters inc. with each individual hair moving and whatnot, they would've. The movie provided plenty of good-natured humor and acknowledged any bad jokes made by mikey by having one of the other turtles comment on them. Although it feels like they could've made the whole movie without mikey or donatello, the characters and their relationships felt very natural as leo and raph have always been on and off with each other.
I believe everyone is sick of origin movies and this provided a sequel that gave the fans everything they wanted.
I believe this review is fair, but agree that you shouldn't mistake the movie for battling the monsters. That'd be like saying that the plot of spider-man 2 was all about spiderman fighting doc ock--which it wasn't. The second movie revolved solely around peter's internal struggle (always being two people). Doctor octupus just appears for him finally prove that he's conquered his troubles internally and can focus on what he wants.
But I digress--this is, after all, turtles not spiders. The movie is about the brothers and how they must rebuild their broken family, the stone generals are merely a concept to prove that they are as they once were--a team.

Ruroni Kenshin Says:
May 13th, 2007 at 10:59
I have to say that TMNT was a wonderful movie, I been a TMNT fan since the 1984 comic book and I must say that this movie is the TMNT movie I always wanted and man did I get my wish. Sorry, dude but the main story wasn't about the monsters, it was about the turtles themselves and how they grew apart. Hence when Splinter said "Family is a bond that can never be broken" The CGI Turtles were excellent in all respects, this is the best CGI movie I ever seen. I know that I'm 28 and yes the turtles aren't what they used to be but as a fan I was more than happy to see the lean, green, fighting machines back in full force I saw this opening day and still I haven't seen a movie as lighthearted and at the same time had a message we all should follow. The best fights were when the Turtles fought the foot clan outside of Winter's building, Raph vs Leo (That one was awesome and also had a hidden message between the brothers) & of course the end fight was great too. My only complaint about this movie was the time limit I wish it was longer. TMNT hands down was a great movie for all ages. The actually story was about their family coming together as one but the Max Winters story was good but did have plotholes but again it was all about the turtles. I hope this movie gets a sequel cause this deserves one in all respects. The return of The Shredder was hinted when Karai spoke of it so I can't wait for the sequel to see Shredder and the turtles round 2, can't continue TMNT II because it wasn't a fight since Super Shredder was crushing the bridge. I want a classic ninja fight like TMNT (the original movie). I just don't get why people wanna hate on movie like this and to be honest this is probably the best comic book based movie I've seen in a while, sure Spider-Man 3 made a lot of movie but that movie was a huge disappointment period not as good as the first two. TMNT was the best Ninja Turtles ever, yes better than the original one and I think that Imagi and Kevin Munroe should be proud of this piece of art because this was the true movie I dreamed about and got me back into the TMNT once again but I always was a fan of the turtles and this movie is excellent can't wait for the sequel. if you haven't seen this one you will not be disappointed especially if you are a TMNT fan. This one put the original to shame the animation is off the hook. can't wait till this come out on DVD I will buy it on the first day and watch it over and over again can't say the same for spidey 3 dough.... wish I could get my 7.50 back for that dumb movie but TMNT is worth 2 movie tickets and thensome.

Blayze Says:
August 8th, 2007 at 23:46
Saying it fails animating humans is pretty silly, since the art is obviously meant to be stylized or cartoonish and never intended to look anything like real people. I don't really expect 'realism' to be one of the most important thing in a movie about mutant animals. :p

Rachel Says:
September 17th, 2007 at 22:51
I have one little problem with this movie and I just have to get it off my chest...
Since the DVD came out my little kids have watched it about 50 times. I love the Turtles given they were a huge hit when I was younger. But there is a small plot flaw that drives me crazy. It has to do with the 13th Monster.
*After the monster capture montage, we see all of the captured monsters in their cages- there are 3 left to catch
*Next, General Aguila tells Winters that 2 more monsters have been caught
*Then, General Aguila tells the brotherhood that Winters has plans to betray them- the 13th monster must not be caught
*Then they show Ralph fighting the little mean red monster in the diner
*1 scene later, after the very awesome Raph vs. Leo fight, The brotherhood captures Leo, and states that he is "not human, but definitely not the 13th monster"
*At the end, the 13th monster is captured to save the day, but it is not the little red monster, it's some huge monster we had not even seen yet.
What happened to the little red monster? Wasn't he the 13th?
Things like this bother me. I tried to reason that maybe the little red monter ate so darn much he grew into some huge monster- but this doesn't even work- as you can clearly see the little red monster in his cage when the portal is reopened at the end.
Can someone help me out with this? Am I missing something? It makes no sense that they would spend millions to make such an awesome movie, but make such a huge mistake.
Besides that, the movie was great! :)

Dominic Says:
October 21st, 2007 at 14:16
I think the movie was pretty good.

I liked the fact that The Foot was back and that it picked up where the first left off, but why is Casey Jones so small and whimpy???

Kabal Says:
March 4th, 2008 at 18:37
About that 13Th monster.You are not missing anything Rachel.there is a mistake in the movie.That small monster should be indeed number 13.
But later when the gates to other world are open and they are sucking monsters into it we can see that small monster is in a cage.To correct this they should change some dialogues.So i think that Aguila should tell Winters that they got 11 monsters.than little monster should be no.12 and finaly at the end of the movie we got no.13.

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