TMNT
Written and Directed by: Kevin Munroe
Starring (the voices of): Patrick Stewart, Laurence Fishburne, Chris Evans, Ziyi Zhang, Kevin Smith, Mako, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Mitchell Whitfield, James Arnold Taylor, Mikey Kelley, Nolan North

I was invited to a pre-screening of the new TMNT movie this Wednesday. This was one of my most anticipated movies of 2007, so needless to say I attended with great excitement. The show started in the best way possible, when a guy got up on the stage and told us, that they had found out that this was in fact the world premiere of the movie. The first public showing of TMNT, right here in Copenhagen, Denmark. He then asked us to please not pirate the movie, and enjoy the show.

No commercials. No trailers, just straight to the company logos, and the movie started.

The movie opens like Lord of the Rings. It sets up an epic long-spanning history that goes before the events taking place in the movie, and right from the first couple of seconds, you get to see how beautiful this movie is. Now, the movie is very stylized and has a clearly defined look to it. I think this worked very much in their favour, because the movie does have a lot of outlandish elements to it, so it’s obvious they couldn’t have gone completely realistic with it. You may feel that they copped out on some of the human characters, but once you get used to the style, which doesn’t take long, you’re not going to care. It really worked for me, and I thought it looked awesome. Just wait till you see close-ups of the turtles in rain.

There were a lot of Japanese people who worked on this movie, and it definitely shows. I know there are people out there who are sick of Japanese influences, and in particular Japanese animation, but I can’t see anybody complaining about the animation in this movie. The turtles have never been more Ninja than in this movie. There is one fight in particular, which is the emotional climax of the movie, which is just incredible, and delivers in every aspect. It’s prolonged, it’s exciting, it’s dramatic, it’s visible and there is genuine doubt as to the outcome.

I deliberately won’t get into much of the story here, mostly because I think movies in general deserve a chance to present it themselves. It’s pretty simple and clear, which is good for a movie like this. The movie focuses a lot on family, and the turtles as brothers. The stereotypes are preserved perfectly, but the stakes are raised so to speak. It is a darker ninja turtles, but only by a small margin to allow for some genuine character to enter the movie, which I thought was excellent, and exactly what the movie needed.

I had hoped for, and after seeing the trailers – expected, a balance between the kid’s movies from the 80s, and something that would seem more like it was written for a big screen, and the movie did not disappoint. There are points where it is obvious that it is a kid’s movie, but only the most dedicated David S. Goyer fan boy would complain about them. If you think of the first trailer where Michelangelo falls in the garbage can at the end, that’s a pretty accurate representation of the movie percentage wise. This is genuinely a movie that both kids and adults can enjoy, and some of the jokes in the movie are genuinely funny. It reminded me of Star Wars in terms of that balance between campy fun and genuine storytelling for the big screen.

A word about the voice acting. The turtles – awesome! Voiced by unknowns, yet instantly recognizable as Leo, Raph, Don & Mike. It was the right choice in my opinion. These characters – not unlike Superman in Bryan Singer’s movie – needed to feel like the same characters they were nearly 20 years ago, and I have to say they melded perfectly. The named actors did very well. Patrick Stewart has a recognizable voice, but his character is so very different from something you’d expect him to be voicing, yet a very appropriate choice. I thought it was an extremely interesting choice, and he did a great job with it. I hardly recognized anybody else in the cast, which is a good thing I think.

In the end, I feel the movie delivered everything I could hope for. After seeing the trailers and TV spots, I was extremely excited to see the movie, and they didn’t lie. Everything that the advertising promised the movie would be, it was. There is a pretty blatant nod towards the end, setting up a sequel, and I would definitely like to see another one of these. Oh, and the movie clocks in at about 85 minutes (just a few minutes shorter than it took to read this review) which is definitely something that needs to be done more often in movies, none more so than kids movies. — Henrik

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