Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Movie #22
Date Released: 3.30.90
Date Watched: 6.11.2020
Reaction:
This is what I appreciate about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:
The climactic line: Now I will finish what I began with your ear
The fact that this movie pretty much mimics a Saturday morning cartoon perfectly, but is shot all in live action. Furthermore, in the days before CGI was commonly used, the whole movie is essentially costumes and actual sets. In fact, I am not even sure they used green screen much at all. This is also what makes the movie look so shoddy. At one point, a character who is fighting with one of the Turtles in the park thinks he is just fighting with someone in a turtle costume, which he is! The levels of suspension of disbelief this movie requires are deep. I recommend taking a gummy before watching.
Totally unexpected and amazingly spottable brief cameo by Sam Rockwell. If you want to see the distinction of what makes great acting, look for Sam Rockwell in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. This movie was complete commercial garbage (and I’m sure it made billions due to the popularity of these characters among 13 year olds) and had a ridiculous script and premise, yet the few moments Sam Rockwell is on camera, it could have been an Oscar contender. He’s fabulous. Even more so in my book now.
This is what I don’t appreciate about this movie:
Wow. The depiction of women and their relationship to men is just mind blowing. Obviously aimed toward boys, this movie is all about dudes fighting with dudes and about their relationships with their dads and their surrogate dads. But, c’mon, women range from being independent but sappily clingy to basically men’s property. It’s pretty repugnant
Still too much homophobic innuendo. It’s pretty subtle in this movie and mostly overshadowed by overabundant machismo, but if you listen closely to the dialogue, you hear a couple cracks. This is still an issue today to some extent. Less on tv but certainly in common guy discussions. I really don’t get it. Why do people feel threatened that someone might think they are gay? It’s fucking stupid.
It’s just one big commercial. To be fair, there is a nostalgic component for me with advertising for everything from soda to Topps baseball cards to Turtle Wax (obviously) but, literally, this is basically just one long commercial.
Ok. I thought this was going to be horrible, was hoping it would be a hidden gem, and walked away with very little other than Sam Rockwell’s 15 second performance. I guess some of the martial arts moves weren’t bad.
But, a pretty ridiculous movie.
Publishing Notes:
