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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: the Movie Spawned from the Success of a Cartoon, Spawned from a Rather Mature Comic...
The inevitable did happen. When the TMNT francise became so big, it spawned a movie. As movies go, it wasn't bad. As movies that are spawned from comic/cartoon properties, it's freakin fantastic. It beat odds to become a better movie than fate normally allows francise adaptions.
For those of you that have read the original Mirage comics, the plot for this movie will be familiar. It's your basic origin story, condensed down into a bite size, one and a half hour chunk of time. There's plenty of good times in this movie, too. The humor was good, the budget was way bigger than in either of the later movies, and there's plenty of Casey Jones, who I think was the best character the series had.
We open with April O'Neil covering a series of crimes commited by an underground ninja gang, who she suspects are a gang from Japan called "The Foot" (not the worst name imaginable, but not great). She gets attacked by Foot Soldiers, and has to be rescued by the Turtles, although she doesn't know she was rescued by them. Raph loses a sai in the process, and the plot gets rolling.
Trying to cover as much ground as possible before this bores everyone, Raph gets angry, storms off, and has a fight with Casey Jones. Raph later saves April, gets his sai back, and April meets the turtles. Lesse... The Foot kidnap Splinter, they fight the Turtles, Casey comes to rescue, and everyone, TMNT, Casey, and April flee the city. There's some hilarity between April and Casey as they start a relationship... but on the whole there is little to mock...
Actually, on the whole there is little to mock in this movie at all, which makes for very lame humor... Gimmie Part 2 or Part 3 for good laughs, where Japanese Warlords all speak english and Splinter looks more like a desecated sock puppet than a mutant rat.
Long story short, the TMNT fight Shredder, but it has to be the rescued Splinter that saves the day, restoring some honor he lost somwhere along the way. Casey ends up being the one to kill the Shred-headed one, and everyone lives happilly ever-after... at least until the next movie is penned and Vanilla Ice is tapped... (sigh)
By far the best of the set. Lemme leave you with this. A little drinking game to play while watching:
Everytime Donnie acts nerdy - One Shot
Everytime Raph gets angry - One Shot
Everytime Raph fights Leo - One Shot
Everytime Mikey lusts after April - One Shot
Everytime Casey and April fight - One Shot
One Shot for every Pizza
Three Shots for every Cowabunga (they were rare in the first movie)
and Three shots when Splinter makes a funny
TMNT On Film - TMNT the Movie
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