TMNT (2007) Review

The original TMNT film, expertly balanced comic book accuracy with amazing stunt work and a lot of heart. It’s one of my all-time favourite films. It’s two direct sequels were rushed out with greatly diminishing returns, both in terms of money and quality.

Despite mixed reports, this film has been created as a fourth entry in that series. It brings with it CGI, a star-studded cast, and a very tasty fight between a certain two brothers.

Let’s start with the cast. It’s impressive! Picard, Buffy, even Captain America. I don’t think any of them phoned it in, and Evans in particular suits Casey. But I know the voices so well. It’s hard to separate the the actor from voices from such well known roles. In this case it feels more of hindrance than a help.

There are no such worries with the turtles. They may not be my favourite takes but they are all suitable and fit the character designs well. I would have preferred more variance in the builds of the Turtles. But! Mikey’s face is exceptional. Amusingly expressive with his wider, flatter face.

The move to CGI has enabled the turtles to move far more fluidly, allowing more than the live action films. The camera follows our heroes tightly as they somersault and spin their way across the New York skyline. Animation has come a long way since 2007 but I don’t think that this one ages badly. Only the human characters give away its age. The level of detail is great, with an impressive rooftop fight in the rain the technical highlight.

So far so good! The problems come along when we get to the villains and the story.

It does take a while to get the story really moving. Starting off with the brothers apart and using their individual skill sets to get on in life, we could do with them getting back into the game a bit quicker. We all know the origin by now. The focus is squarely on Leo and Raph, and I don’t know why it needed to be. The fight is great (Raph isn’t better!), but it means Donnie and Mikey get shunted into the background. It’s akward to lean so heavily on the family angle when you’re shafting everyone else.

In a world populated with mutated animals and ninjas, the original villains are surprisingly nonsensical. Their back story makes zero sense, bashing mythology, magic and astronomy together clumsily. My daughter my not care right now, but with such a collection of villains to choose from, it’s disappointing that they went with something so…bland.

2007 TMNT is a decent enough film. Don’t think about it too much and just enjoy it for what it is. Whilst it balances light and dark decently it doesn’t include a compelling enough villain or a young Sam Rockwell. Or even Tatsu.