Movie Review: Turtles Forever

If there is any one thing that defines my childhood it's The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I started watching the Ninja Turtles before I could even walk and the turtles' names were among some of my first words... oh and pizza. I would don (see what i did there) my Ninja Turtle cloths, play with my Ninja Turtles action figures and sing the Ninja Turtles theme song as I ran through my old New York apartment. They were what I aspired to be.

25 years later its hard to find someone who hasn't heard of the quartet of kung fu reptiles and while many kids may be familiar with a more contemporary iteration of the Turtles, retailers and merchandisers still sell plenty of first generation Turtle schwag for the nostalgic suckers in my generation. So what did I think when I heard that, in response to selling the rights to produce Ninja Turtles cartoons to Nickelodeon, they were making one last feature length movie depicting an adventure spanning three Turtle-verses and starring the casts of the original 90's Ninja Turtles, the contemporary Turtles AND the Eastman and Laird comic book Turtles? ... I think I crapped my pants in that moment. Sadly I had completely forgotten about the plan months and months ago. It wasn't until recently that I remembered its existence and discovered the movie had already been released. So I did what any true Ninja Turtles fan would do and downloaded it (DVD release hasn't even been announced yet). This is a review of that film...

The movie opens up with the new Turtles discovering that doppelgangers have shown up to fight their baddies for them... and got captured in the process. The two Turtles teams eventually meet up and find out that the 90's Turtles accidentally sent themselves and the Technodrome to the new Turtle's universe. They do an incredibly great job contrasting the two teams and portraying the tongue-and-cheek mentality of the Turtles I grew up with. Eventually the 90's Shredder (literally one of my favorite villains in fiction, period) and brain without a body, Krang, figure out what has happened and Shredder, in his misguided ambition and excitement, attempts to locate this universe's version of him thinking he can team up with what he believes to be some super bad ass version of himself. He learns however, that this version of Shredder really has no intrest in teaming up and is completely and totally ruthless. Many hilarious shenanigans ensue and without ruining what happens they end up in "Turtle Prime", home of the original comic book Turtles (or more specifically, the Turtles as they appeared in the first few issues). Its awesome how they acknowledge in the Ninja Turtles universe (or multiverse I guess) that the original comics is where it all began.

The movie is a great adventure for fans young and old, but is way better if you are familiar with the many forms the Turtles have taken over the last 25 years. I am not very familiar with the newer Turtles, but they seemed to act a lot like the Turtles of the New Line films, with the exception of Donatello acting like Corey Feldman. The voice acting for the 90's Turtles was as good as you could possibly do without getting the original actors (its been two decades...) with the exception of Leonardo... he sounds weird. The animation was pretty damn good as well and the fight scenes were surprisingly epic.

Bottom line the movie was awesome. Seeing characters like the original April, Rocksteady, Bebop and Krang running around in a movie made in 2009 made my nostalgia glad almost explode. I give the film 5 Anti-Technodrome roller skates out of 5.