Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. I want this to rock so hard. I'm such a geek for the Ninja Turtles. Here's a review from an early screening. The movie's a month away from release now, but I'm sure there might still be some tweaks to be made, so keep that in mind... even though the review is very favorable. Enjoy... little to no spoilers below!
Aintitcool Gang, I have been reading your site for many years and really enjoy the site. This is the first time I have ever wrote a review for a movie and the first time I have written to Aintitcool.com so bear with me as I write my sonnet for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles the movie. I attended a sneak preview of TMNT’s last night at a mega theatre in Kansas City. The line to see the movie was impressive; half of the people that were in line did not get to see the movie and as the movie theatre was filling up the persons in charge of the movie were gathering different age groups to fill the remaining seats, as I can imagine to fulfill some requirements from the studio execs to gather demographic data. Overall the theatre was a mix of teenage ages (14-18) to young adults (22-29). The movie was a great introduction to new TMNT fans and also played a very nice homage to old geezers like me that grew up with the turtles. I will break down my review in two parts, animation and story, as I feel these are two main aspects that one would see this film. Animation- The animation was top notch. The human characters looked like the human characters of Monster House. The detail on them was simple but very pleasing to look at. The turtle animation was brilliant; to me the animators used a mix of the Turtles from the graphic comics and from the cartoon series. The turtles movements and fight scenes looked great and there were lots of life to the characters as they drew there weapons and interacted with other characters. The best aspect of the animation for me was the emotion that the turtles possessed, there was one scene towards the end with Leonardo and Raphael that stood out to be very passionate and engrossing. Story- The story started off a bit slow, as the writers told the story of an established TMNT team that have been in place for awhile, there was a reference to the defeat of Shredder, but the only staple from the original Turtle franchise was the inclusion of Casey Jones, April Oneal, Splinter and of course the turtles. The story was very fluid after the initial setup of drama that existed between the turtles. The theme was also done very well and was mostly focused on teamwork and the importance of family. I would recommend this for younger kids, most of the scenes that included fighting had over exaggerated monsters that sometimes resulted in a comedic capture or scene. I hope that if another movie is made the writers will include shredder as the main villain and or include Rocksteady, Bebop and Krang. Overall- I really enjoyed this movie. I didn’t know what to expect at first but I was very pleased with the animation, story, and pace of the movie. If you are a turtle fan I believe you will be in for a treat after the scarring events of the turtles live action movie featuring vanilla ice, and the downfall that was the sequels that left turtle fans hanging up there multi colored bandanas. If you use this, then you may refer to me as BLUESQUIG.
