TMNT (2007)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological*

I don't know why it took over ten years for Hollywood to attempt another Mutant Turtles film, even if the last in the live-action series did not perform well. In fairness, though, back in the nineties there was little evidence that any superhero franchise could have "legs" beyond three or four films. After all, both the eighties SUPERMAN series and the nineties BATMAN series flamed out with a dismal fourth flick.

TMNT made decent box-office, though, and part of its charm is that animation of any kind will always be more efficacious than live-action as far as depicting high-octane superhero thrills. But the other part of the movie's charm is that it got the Turtles, however briefly, out of their pizza-munching comfort zone.

The plot discretely hops over the events of Movie Three and addresses what happened to the teenage terrapins after their nemesis Shredder dies at the end of Movie Two. Writer-director Kevin Munroe gets maximum benefit out of seeing the four happy dudes suddenly at odds. Through the viewpoints of the Turtles' human buddies April O'Neil (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Casey Jones (Chris Evans), the audience learns the primary cause. The brothers' rat-sensei Splinter (Mako, in one of his last roles) sent Leonardo to South America to hone his ninja skills. Whatever Splinter's motives, the result is that the other three become somewhat divided by the departure of the oldest brother, who had always been the de facto leader. Donatello and Michelangelo both get mundane jobs that don't involve revealing their turtle-tude. Raphael, always the angriest and least patient of the quartet, secretly dons an armored costume and becomes a solo vigilante, taking out his rage on the criminal element. April is so concerned at her friends' fragmentation that she journeys to South America to talk Leonardo into returning. But Leonardo, who may be going through a crisis of self-confidence (Munroe never clarifies this), refuses.

But Raphael is right to keep patrolling the streets, for a new menace is at hand. Businessman Max Winters (Patrick Stewart), who is actually an ancient general cursed with immortality, has a plan to get rid of his ageless nature and to live a normal life. Problem is, his plan involves opening the same dimensional portal that bestowed immortality on him, and the first time the portal opened, it unleashed on Earth thirteen monsters, which I *think* have just been hidden away in remote places, like Bigfoot. The menace also involves four of Winters' contemporaries who got turned into stone statues, whom Winters re-animates, However, the generals then form their own agenda, as does Karai (Zhang Ziyi), leader of a faction of the Foot Clan. (For some reason the film is cagey about Karai being the adoptive daughter of Shredder, as she is in most iterations, but perhaps Munroe hoped to do a Big Reveal in a sequel.)

Munroe's save-our-dimension plot is overly complicated, but it's mostly backdrop for sorting out the ennui plaguing the ninja crusaders. Leonardo does return to New York of course. And when he does, he finds that in addition to coping with the new threat, he must seek to bring Raphael's animus under control. The duel-between-brothers is the film's highlight, more impressive for its emotional tenor than for the actual animation of the fight-scene. I particularly like the fact that Munroe does not try to psychologize Raphael's anger. It just exists, an elemental part of his nature that he has to rein in for his survival and that of his siblings.

Once the Turtles do band together against their enemies, the film remains enjoyable but only a little better than average. One minor asset is that April, usually a side-liner in the action scenes, actually "gets her ninja on" and performs a few swordplay moves-- her ninja-gear all yellow, like her jumpsuit from the eighties cartoon. Kevin Munroe voiced possible plans for another animated movie but fate and Nickolodeon had other plans. Still, TMNT remains an above-average effort with a property that seems fairly resistant to innovation.