Remember how pumped I was on this movie coming out? I do! I was a big fan of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles growing up, and saw the first two movies, so why wouldn’t I have been excited about seeing this? When this movie originally came out, I was working at a movie theater where it was being released, and I got to watch it the Thursday evening before it was supposed to be released, and I also invited a few friends along. More importantly, I had invited Nate Cabana, Adam Bach, and Brian J. Goddard. Do you know these people? Well, you should. Anyways, I was hard at work on a Thursday night, trying to do my work as quickly as possible to get ready. I was contacted by Brian, mentioning that he might be a few minutes late, but to get the movie started anyway. It doesn’t matter that I was sad that my friends weren’t there on time, it didn’t matter that they showed up once the movie already had started, but what did matter? Oh, I don’t know, maybe the fact that they SURPRISED ME WITH A WHOLE FUCKING PIZZA FROM ANTONIO’S……AND SODA. How could I have overlooked these details? In my years growing up, I had forgotten what’s important. For the Ninja Turtles, it’s about soda, pizza, friends, and crime-fighting. And I had finally had all of those things….especially the crime-fighting.

Oh, and they made the turtles gay. Did I mention that? Gay brothers!

This film takes place after the events of the first three films, supposedly, which is kind of confusing, considering this one is animated and the other three aren’t. I guess it doesn’t really matter, but it establishes why the group isn’t together. Leonardo is down in Central America, fighting for the people in poverty or something like that, when he is visited by April O’ Neil in an effort to convince him to come back. Donatello and Michelangelo and working shitty jobs, as an IT operator and pizza delivery guy, and Raphael is always tired, because he is also a vigilante known as Nightwatcher. Leonardo comes back to join them, which happens to coincide with demon things being released onto the city. If all the demons aren’t taken care of, there will be worse demons on the way. Remember Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed? Imagine that plot, but with the Ninja Turtles. They fight bad guys, they eat pizza, do ninja stuff, and there’s an awesome fight between Leonardo and Raphael on the rainy rooftops, but they eventually put their differences behind them to fight bad guys. Did I mention Casey Jones is there to help? Well, he is! So the good guys win, the bad guys lose, Splinter is their mentor, and all the turtles are doing flips and jumping off of things. Success!

There’s something physically impossible about April’s physique in this movie…….impossibly SEXY! HEY OH!

This is the best installment in the TMNT franchise since the original film. Maybe that’s not saying much, but everyone seems to have fond memories of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Secret of the Ooze. But you know what? That movie fucking sucked. I don’t know why people remember that movie being awesome, because it wasn’t. The first film is pretty dark, and isn’t too cartoony, Raphael gets the shit kicked out of him, Casey Jones is a badass, Splinter gets captured, all good things. Secret of the Ooze had Vanilla Ice, a shitty plot, even more cartoony, and no Casey Jones as well as no Corey Feldman voicing Donatello. The third film had Corey Feldman again, and Casey Jones came back, but the entire plot sucks and is terrible. This installment had pretty cool action, and even though it was animated, it wasn’t too silly, and the look of the film was a lot darker and more similar looking to the original black and white comics. That’s something most people forget, is that this comic was originally black and white, and started in Northampton, MA, and it wasn’t until the animated TV show that all the turtles got different colors and apparently lived in New York City. Don’t believe me? I have some comics where they mention Northampton by name. BY NAME, I SAY! There’s also a scene at the end where you get to see Shredder’s helmet up on a shelf, and dumb little kids won’t get that reference.Did I mention the fight between Raphael and Leonardo might be one of the best scenes of anything related to the turtles? Although they have had their differences and there has always been tension between the two, it was typically a lot more subtle, that to see it come to fruition in such a big way was really awesome. As embarrassing as it was, I remember gripping the arms of the seat I was sitting in really tightly, because I didn’t believe these turtles would be beating the shit out of each other. Then again, I might have just been excited because of the pizza.

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