Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series

  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III (1993)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2022) For this third (and final) instalment of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series, the crew heads to (of all places) feudal Japan thanks to some supernatural shenanigans that are barely surprising in the so-called logic of the series. It’s inane, but compared to the insanity of the previous instalments, it’s almost unremarkable. The overall plot isn’t anything special, but Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III’s best moments are in seeing the irreverent turtles longing for pizza and making pop-culture reference à la Clint Eastwood in this historical context. It’s not much, but I’m not sure writer-director Stuart Gillard aimed any higher—clearly aimed at kids with a fascination for martial arts, pizza and ninjas, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III fails to make the most of its admittedly decent production values. I’d say too bad, but really—were we expecting anything different at this point?

  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze (1991)

    Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze (1991)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, February 2019) Nobody expected a classic from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze, but the result is such that it will confound even those who thought they knew what to expect. Maximizing the jokey aspects of the first film and toning down much of whatever possible seriousness one could imagine from its silly premise, this entry in the series is dull until it gets silly enough to get a reaction. Whether this reaction is amusement or mockery is up to the viewer. Plotwise, the titular oozy premise of the film works as both backstory and pretext to introduce new villains. If it does feel partly more interesting than its prequel, it’s that we’re finally done with the origins story and on to something else. (Even if that “something else” is not that new either from the TV series or the later movie reboot.) Alas, there’s a long way from premise to execution: once you accept the idea of skilled martial artists fighting in bulky turtle suits, the film’s numerous fight scenes will be meaningless for anyone over twelve. The core of the series does remain the turtles, however, and the efforts required to suspend disbelief in the pre-digital era. There’s a heroic quality to portraying kung fu fighting turtles in live action, and the special effects for the entire film are both impressive and silly throughout. This sequel’s overall jokey tone reinforces the unreality of the film. Even if you somehow manage to suspend your disbelief and get over the film’s insistent absurdity, you will inevitably come to the moment where the turtles ham it up on a nightclub scene with none other than Vanilla Ice (“T-U-R-T-L-E Power!”) Maybe your brain will survive the experience. If it does, maybe it will be because of the inherent time-capsule aspect of a film self-consciously designed to appeal to early-1990s teenagers.

  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows (2016)

    Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, August 2018) It’s actually amazing, these days, how much effort and resources can go in making movies that barely make a blip on the cultural radar. We’re told that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows cost $135M, a reasonable amount for a live-action film featuring CGI characters on-screen for nearly its entire duration, and dynamic action sequences—including one in the Amazon River. The film made nearly twice its budget back, which today means that it’s not nearly enough to offset marketing and other expenses. As a result, this is likely the end of the road for this third Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movie series—a reboot is likely to follow at some point. And yet, and yet, Out of the Shadows itself is often too uninteresting to be memorable. While it’s slightly better than the original—at least in terms of presenting a halfway-intriguing premise—, the film is practically a case study in 2010s blockbuster cinema and how, once the shouting and the explosions are over, it can be instantly forgotten. Out of the Shadows, like its predecessor, really comes alive during its action sequences: The highway chase sequence, the Brazilian river sequence and the Technodrome ending sequence are director Dave Green’s three claims to viewer enjoyment and excitement. When the film stumbles is in what’s probably a too-gross antagonist in a PG-13 film: Krang is executed as a Lovecraftian nightmare of exposed viscera and tentacles, which is in-keeping with the source material but executed too vividly to be purely enjoyable without a side order of nausea. But Out of the Shadows doesn’t, in the end, amount to much—if you’re a Turtles fan, you got your sequel. Otherwise, you got yet another CGI-heavy spectacle forgotten a week later. Such is the norm today.

  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990)

    Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, August 2017) It’s hard to see rubber-suited people playing ninja turtles without feeling as if the last exit for goofiness was about fifty miles behind, but sometimes that’s the entire point. The 1990 version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles embraces its nuttiness and doesn’t really care if everyone thinks it’s silly. A comedy more than anything else, it doesn’t aspire to higher pretensions than entertaining the kids. Sure, it may look silly, but it’s well-executed silliness, with just enough conviction to sidestep the worst accusations of cookie-cutter filmmaking. The turtles themselves come from the Jim Henson Creature Shop, one of the best in the business at the time. As far as human characters are concerned, Judith Hoag is cute enough as reporter April O’Neil. Ironically, the two more modern adaptations of the franchise may only help to bolster the profile of the first film in the series—this one is goofy and it knows it, whereas the subsequent ones often lose their ways in trying to present an action spectacle. I was probably five years too old back in 1990 to get into the Turtles and I’m faaar too old now, so it’s not as if I have any sentimental attachment to the characters. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sometimes degenerates in a generic martial-art noise—the characters are too similar, the darkly lit sets are dull and the fights feel as if they could come from any similar film—but, periodically, it has just the right amount of humour to make itself interesting again. Considering the intentionally ludicrous source material, it’s about as good as anyone could have hoped for.