Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

It’s not simply cashing in on the popularity of the TMNT cartoon, but is actually a thoughtful, emotional, and challenging movie about the loss and reconstruction of family. It’s got lots of hilarious one-liners and ninja action too, making it one of the most well-rounded comic book movies that’s not afraid to hold reverence to the source material while also having some fun with it.

Barron concentrates on keeping the action moving at a brisk clip, drawing on his music video experience to serve up an entertaining series of odd camera angles, gratuitous camera movements and complicated lighting schemes. The results are lively and funny enough to keep adults enthralled as well as kids.

The script is peppered with clever lines even the transformation (and expansion) of cartoon violence into the live arena is achieved without resorting to realism. To balance the fighting, Splinter waxes philosophically on loyalty, perseverance and anger.

Jim Henson's Creature Shop has created splendid animatronic characters (including a four-foot talking rat), though extra distinguishing marks between the turtles would be appreciated. Between the dubbed dialogue and the dark visuals, the cumulative effect is curiously dislocating.

The mutations never stop. But that won't upset those 8-year-olds; changing so rapidly themselves, kids love tales of metamorphosis, the more the merrier. For them, caught in the commercial grip of the latest craze, it matters only that their cute little mutants have taken the giant step onto the big screen. That's probably all they need; that's definitely all they're given. [30 Mar 1990]

Kids will probably enjoy all the nonsense, and even attending adults have one consolation: There are worse things to sit through. Just rent Howard the Duck if you don't believe it. [31 Mar 1990, p.1D]

When a kids’ flick has nothing to offer but cute special effects, it’s easy to think the filmmakers are patting themselves on the backs for their technical ingenuity. That’s not comic fantasy — that’s marketing.

1990s childhood classic film. 35 years later, I'm still able to go to the movies to watch the movie magic that still holds up in quality.

They don't make them like this anymore Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles definitely one of the gr8est movies of all time, growing up in the early 90s this was probably the first film I watched, every other turtles movie wishes it could be this good I would rate it higher if it was possible.

This movie was a really great blend of the cheesy humor of the cartoon and the gritty feel of the comics. It was one of my favorite movies as a kid and I still love it now.

Quiero suponer que no es tan mala como parece, si no fuera por el guion superficial y el humor, que es muy infantil. Dios bendiga la versión de 2023!

This is a really weird one to analyze. Mostly inspired by the darker, moodier tone of Eastman & Laird’s original comic books, the turtles’ feature film debut also injects many of the sillier, mainstream-friendly elements of the Saturday morning cartoon. The two extremes don’t exactly meet in the middle, giving us strange juxtapositions like Michaelangelo cracking wise in a big fight scene while Raphael lies, bloodied and unconscious, a few feet away. Written for an audience that won’t ask many questions, it plays fast and loose with its plot points, like so many other spectacle-driven films of its era. Nothing holds up to scrutiny, even if we’re willing to give a pass to the five-foot reptiles’ well-traveled origin story. Seeing this in the theater, eleven-year-old me was disappointed by the sluggish second act, unnecessary romantic subplots and shadowy textures. Watching it as an adult, with twin eleven-year-olds of my own, I constantly rolled my eyes at the terrible jokes and smoke-and-mirrors fight scenes. A conservative estimate would put my groan average at twice per scene. It gets points for the surprisingly well-aged creature effects (great job on that, Jim Henson) and for trying to stay close to the spirit of the source material, but it’s awfully tough to look past the weak production values, cheesy action cut-aways and ham-tastic dialogue. My goodness, there’s a lot of bad dialogue.