tmnt

I went to the dollar theater last night and watched TMNT.  I’d been meaning to see it for a while, but wasn’t really sure if it would be worth my time or not.  I haven’t seen the new cartoon on TV at all, so I wasn’t sure what to expect, if anything.  Turned out, the movie was pretty good.

The animation was really incredible, but beyond that the entire style of the movie was spot on.  The turtles and all the characters just had some really cool moves for an action movie geared towards a young audience.  They would flip around and fight tough and genuinely act themselves.  Their movements were really detailed and natural as far as being in character.  It sucked me in pretty good.

The only thing I didn’t like was that Splinter’s voice actor sounded like a drunken old man.  He was slurring a bit and it was distracting.

The story was really good too, as well as the dialogue.  Most kids movies take a turn here or there and do something just really stupid, but this film didn’t have any of that.  It was well-contained, and “mature” for lack of a better word.  That is, it was obviously written and geared for the 8 to 12 year old audience, and it never left that target.  Really well done.

I, of course, have always loved Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  I remember being so excited for the original live-action film to come out back in the day, and I even had a poster of Leonardo.  I had all of the action figures too, which I never collected those as a kid, except for very few G.I. Joe and Transformers toys.   I kept thinking about the movie, too .. I wanna watch the old one again, it’s been a long time, and it was a pretty good drama in its own right as well.

Speaking of which, the drama in this one was really good, too.  I won’t go into spoilers, but the story (about the brothers at least) was solid and pretty cool.  I’d like to watch it again, sometime.