Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaanyway, the point of all this crap? I like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Neither truly based on the original Mirage Studios comicbooks, nor on the popular Saturday morning cartoon series, the movie instead blends elements of the two to make possibly the easiest to stomach mixed drink that screenwriters Todd Langen and Bobby Herback have put together since that lovely Pink Squirrel they made for me at their last box social. Unfamiliar with the concept of kung-fu humanoid reptiles? This movie will hold your hand and ease you into an otherwise potentially maddening series of concepts. Hell, if even my mom could enjoy it, you know it can't be a total loss... and forget that last part, about Gods having mothers...

New York City sits in the grip of a terrible crime wave, as so duly noted in a convenient newspaper headline shown within the movie's opening scene. The Big Scrapple never really recovered from the cinematic crime wave that '70s and '80s Hollywood plunged it into with such memorable "films" as Death Wish, Taxi Driver and, yes, even The Exterminator... albeit to a lesser extent... make that a much lesser extent. Even in this early '90s piece, gangs of young vagrants still plague the pre-Guiliani streets... but since it's a 'PG' flick, we won't be seeing much of the famed adult entertainment industry that was so prominent at the time. The latest craze? Ninjas. Yes, it's an all-out pajama party on the wrong side of the law, when some of the cheesiest martial artists this side of Chinese Super Ninjas decide it's time to give the confused and disenfranchised street urchins of NYC some purpose, some discipline, a place to waste their lives, people to call family and more product placement than you could shake a copy of Return of the Killer Tomatoes at, all while operating under the guise of an everyday diaper service... don't ask, move on... I said move on!... NOW!!!... oh, that's it, I'm ending this paragraph here and... now.

Amidst this tumultuous heat wave of larceny and petty theft, TV news reporter April O'Neil is ever vigilant in her quest to pin these crimes on somebody, even if that just means taking pot shots at NYPD Chief Stern... which is actually pretty damn unfair, considering the fuzz isn't used to dealing with ninjas, nor is it as if Stern's on the take, cuz he's not. As if his job isn't hard enough right now, he's gotta put up with some empowered news broad poking him in the face with the 1st amendment week nights at 6 and 11 and Saturdays before an all new season of "Saturday Night Live". She'll taste the bitter fruits her seeds of curiosity have born though, when a long night of sitting in front of a TV camera and talking ends with a mugging by the very thieves she's sought to put an end to! Yes, things may have changed in Miss O'Neil's agenda to be a strong and independent woman of the media had her attackers gone through with their intentions of simply robbing her (remember, 'PG', so all the sexual assault of crimes in New York must be sanitized for your protection). I say "may have", if not for the timely intervention of an airborne ninja weapon, a short bout of total darkness and the strange and eerie force that whomps her attackers, ties them up, then leaves just before the cops show up, always on time to be too late.

While the pigs tidy-up the work of some person(s) who obviously does their jobs better than they do, we see a masked figure watching from a nearby manhole (whose cover no one else happens to notice lifted from it's base so that said masked figure can look out above ground), who can only whisper "damn" as April spies the ninja dagger that bust the alley light two seconds earlier, lying prone on the concrete beside her until she picks it up and slips it into her purse... and how exactly does she expect the cops to stop the recent outbreak of evil rash on the ass of the city, when "good citizens" like herself are withholding evidence like that?! Hey, you know the media credo: if there's no news to report, figure out a way to make some yourself! Our focus shifts to a subterranean level now though, as we peek beneath the urine soaked streets of Manhattan to the urine soaked sewers of Manhattan, where three large, turtle-like beings jump around, spouting lines of catch phrases and buzzwords in celebration of their recent actions, saving O'Neil without being seen... what fun's is doing a good deed if you're not gonna get any credit for it afterwards?! Anyway, while these three get "Bosa Nova" together, a fourth shellback brings up the rear, looking woefully at his beloved ninja dagger and once again saying the next big catch phrase that kids will love, "DAMN!"... to be followed shortly after with such memorable marketing genius decisions as "Hell", "Crap" and "Boobies".

The problem with franchise pics is that, unless you're already familiar with the product, you might have no idea what the Hell is going on. So, in case you needed a short crash course on who these four sewer-dwelling pet shop refugees are, here we go: Leonardo's the leader, the group's voice of reason, the "calm in the storm" so to speak (in cheap metaphor). His biggest downfall is that he's the "teacher's pet", meaning he's always up their master Splinter's ass and trying to stop his brothers from doing things that Splinter wouldn't agree with. A.K.A. Stick-In-The-Mud. Leo wears a blue eye bandana and specializes in dual katana blades, i.e. ninja swords. Donatello (voiced by Corey "The Feld" Feldman, but acted by some stuntman in a rubber suit) is the brains of the quartet. Though it's never really displayed in this medium to a large extent, Donnie's got a natural knack for computers, mechanics and pretty much every science you can think of... hmmmm, must get a lot of discarded college textbooks down there... In addition to having the brains of a nerd, this turtle also suffers from the nerd condition of trying to socially compensate for his big brain. Not wanting to be alienated by his brothers for his superior intellect (how did "The Feld" get this job again?), Don tries his hardest to fit in with quips, puns and one-liners all his own, salted far too liberally with that "I'm trying WAY too hard" mannerism. Word for the wise 'Tello: too much salt will kill you, and your attitude is like eating a 5lb. bag a day.

Don fancies the purple mask (maybe because he's full of old fashioned PRIDE?) and he wields a bo staff, i.e. long stick. Michaelangelo was always my personal fav because like myself he was the class clown of the crew. Although, unlike myself, who did it because he was socially unaccepted due to his big fat physique and needed some way to make friends, Mike does it because, well, every group needs an entertainer to keep the mood light. Oddly enough, Mikey's toned down in the movie, whereas in the cartoons he was always a doof spewing a constant "California surfer" rhetoric. This is more than likely because he wasn't dubbed by a certain star of '80s teen buddy movies, so much of his bad jokes were probably clipped and pasted into Donatello's script. Personally, I like it better this way. If there's one thing Mike was never given enough of, it was maturity. He wears orange and swings a mean set of nunchauks, i.e. sticks fastened together with a short length of chain or rope. Raphael rounds out los hermanos cuatro. He's the hard ass of the four, or the local hothead if you will. This is best noted by his heavy Brooklyn accent... which only he has by-the-way... Though the resident "lone wolf" foil to Leo's "no 'i' in 'team'", Raph knows where his loyalties lie and never forgets the unbreakable bonds of brotherhood... and I'm starting to sound like a bad commercial for the Army...

Raphael wears a red eye bandana (the color of rage and passion, hence why the ladies love him) and swings a pair of sais, i.e. three pronged ninja daggers. Though the flick's about a team of turtles, viewers will note the obvious focus on Raph for pretty much the entire length of the movie. Sounds a little one-sided, but given the fact this is a spotlight of physical pain, personal misery and an "after school special" revelation about letting your friends love and support you, it'd not an enviable position for the troubled teen ninja mutant. Last but not least is the turtles' mentor/sensei/educator/trainer/father-figure Splinter. Splinter's creation, as well as pretty much the creative origins of the entire TMNT franchise, are in actuality a spoof of Marvel Comics�' blind lawyer vigilante Daredevil. Like Daredevil, the turtles learned the ways of kicking evil's ass from a guy with a funny name. While DD's trainer was a blind old guy named Stick, TMNT creators Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird decided to name their little old rat sensei character Splinter in comparison. As for how his name fits in within the boundaries of the series itself, it's usually explained as "because of the way he can turn wood into mere 'splinters' with his bare hands"... not the best idea in the world, but oh well. Splints like to wear his ratty (*wink*wink*) kimono and wields a walking stick, i.e. a stick to walk with. As for how it is these green meanies and their saw-toothed, board splintering adoptive poppa came to be and where they came to be from, that'll be revealed later on in this increasingly longer review for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, brought to you by Parker Brothers�, Burger King�, Domino's Pizza�, Archie Comics�, The Sex Pistols�, and The Tomb Of Anubis... trademark symbol pending...

So, the fab four of the piss 'n' shit highway return to their underground lair to report to Splinter on their first victory over us dirty, uncivilized, sweaty monkey folk. As with any true sensei, Splinter's congratulations are off the "backhanded" racks from their local Target�, telling his pupils they may have won, and they may win many times in the future, and they may be able to kill a man 12 times, brew a pot of coffee (grinding the beans themselves mind you), play an entire game of Risk and turn turds into platinum before said guy hits the ground, but there's still more they've yet to learn and more miles on their journey to fulfilling their destinies as, uhm, 5ft. tall warrior turtles whose mouths don't quite sink up to their words. As I said, typical ninja master crap to sucker the students into paying out for another six weeks of lessons. When he tries to get his "sons" to sit back and engage in some mediation, they instead commit themselves to their age (remember, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) and unwind from their 7 second beating of a gang of punks with a "you know they've been planning this" dance number to "Tequila" as they await their latest order from Domino's�. Well, our three more light-hearted members do, while sad-sop Raph opts instead for a late night viewing of Critters...

Whoa! Back up! two things stabbing me in the eyes that I need to talk over with myself first before I go any further with this!

First off, the Domino's� guy is riding through the near empty, not exactly "well lit" streets of the turtles' hometown on a scooter bike?! A hungry bum or two catch whiff of that shit and they'd jump the prick in a New York minute (all while in a New York state of mind to boot...), bash his head in with a brick, steal his hat, dump his body in the East River, eat his pizza, then drive around on his stupid little scooter drunkenly for an hour before driving it into a subway tunnel falling on the third rail, to be electrocuted and carried off by rats the size of my Caprice Classic. As for Raph's unhindered viewing of his movie, Critters was released in 1986, four years prior to the release of our feature. Somehow I don't see Critters as the kind of movie to hold onto enough box office that it was shown for a staggering four years in theatrical circulation... Wouldn't it have been more believable to use a more recent movie for the scene?! Then again, how much believability do I expect from a movie about four turtles and a rat who play vigilante to the infested avenues of the NYC? Alright, some naive little shred of my common sense has let it pass: Critters was either such a great movie that it stayed in theaters for 4+ years, or Raphael traveled back in time 4 years to see it in a magical Last Action Hero type of magical movie house. Oh yeah, speaking of vigilantes...

After heading out of the theater in disgust of the dribble he'd just subjected himself and his $8 to, our trench coat wearing hero (another complaint about how well a 5ft. dressed like a Humphrey Bogart understudy can blend in so well with the rest of Manhattan's populace, which I'm not going into heavy detail over right now...) witnesses an everyday purse snatching, only to trip up the duo of cretins and reacquire the bundle for the little old lady it'd been taken from. God eats a donut, the Elephant Man's on the cover of "GQ", Mister Rogers and Captain Kangaroo rub each other all over with dirty hand puppets covered in rich creamery butter, and everybody's happy. Not so lucky for the hoods though, as their escape from further harm leads them into Central Park where they, oddly enough, are mugged by a pretty chiseled Elias Koteas by the name of Casey Jones. Casey's more than just another pretty Elias Koteas face though, because he's a former professional hockey goalie who now puts his mask and golf bag full of sports equipment to good use: mauling the criminal element! The two are no different, as he beats them down momentarily, threatening to collapse their skulls with a "high sticking" penalty or three, until the timely interference courtesy of Raph, who feels the lads need a lesson, but in morality, not in the class of Busted Anatomy 101. The two creatures of the night trade blows, like any meeting of do-gooders with differing views on their good guy manuals, but Mr. Jones ends on the upper hand, sending the turtle airborne into a trash basket thanks to a shot from his cricket bat before he escapes into the night:
Casey - 1, Raphael - 0... and yet another scream of "DAMN!" into the night for the reptile.

As for April, she recovers from her attack like a trooper and goes on to conduct a scathing interview with Chief Stern, busting his hairy little balls on live television and inquiring as to why Stern is ignoring word from Little Tokyo as to the similarities of New York's local crimewave with the activities of a once feared group of ninjas known as the Foot, originating back to their homeland. Meanwhile, some shadowy figure watching a wall of televisions (Elvis?!) decides he's not a big fan of April's, and introduces one of his many tubes to his happy little friend, throwing knife. He presumably tells someone off camera to "find her, silence her". Speak of the devil and he materializes with a hard-on and an ice cream scooper full of Vaseline�, as O'Neil hits the subway following her interview, only to be confronted by said pajama salesmen and bitch-slapped into unconsciousness. Before they can show her their deadly "footbang" technique though, Raphael interjects, having followed April to take back his sai. With both his weapons back in their rightful place, he cracks a few eggs and makes off with the reporter while the Foot recovers. Being a professional amateur movie reviewer like I am, I'll bypass any and all podiatral humor in the better interest of everyone reading. But, I am going to drop another small factoid about the creative origins of the turtles: their arch-villains of the Foot, are again a parody of a Marvel property, namely the evil group of ninja assassins known as, you guessed it, "the Hand".

Raph takes the unconscious April back to their lair, where a short debate ends with Splinter givin' his boys the A.O.K. to keep their first pet, unknown to all that an uninvited guest in black (not Johnny Cash) has also followed the turtle's escape path. O'Neil wakes up to see a 5ft rat staring her in the eye, and gets understandably freaked, no, super-freaked, outta her gourd. After climbing the furniture like any scared kitten when you first bring it home from the slaughterhouse, she soon calms down enough to sit and listen to Splinter's tale of how he and the lads came to be. Meanwhile, whereas April only gets the audio to the story, we're treated with additional visual to this flashback. Fifteen years ago, Splinter was just a pet rat in the cage of a Japanese immigrant and learned the art of hand-to-hand (or "mano-a-mano" for our friends from south-of-the-border, i.e. Taco Bell�) combat known as Ninjitsu. Somehow, due to actions as yet unclear to us, Splints found himself alone and hungry in the sewers of NYC. There he scavenged a broken fishbowl and four baby turtles. Coincidentally enough, he also found a busted canister nearby labeled "RADIOACTIVE MATERIAL" that had spilled a puddle of what looks like the green slime I used with the Masters of the Universe Slime Pit Playset� back in "the day", or "ye olde days" for our friends East of the Atlantic, i.e. the Limeys. Instead of eating them immediately, the sentient vermin herded them into a coffee can for safe keeping. By the next day, the reptiles had doubled in size, much to the joy of Splinter's stomach! But, he too was growing and his body changing, until he and the turtles became humanoid in nature, walking on their hind legs and even teaching themselves English... ouch! Damn it! I hate it when I don't see those plot holes coming and I step right into 'em, twisting my ankle and forcing me to call in "crippled" to work for a week.

From the way Splinter puts it, the turtles and himself simply started using their voice boxes and as luck would have it, the words they were making up (and completely understanding mind you) just happened to be established parts of the English language, including slang and surfer jargon like "pizza" and "radical"... Couldn't somebody have just written in the script with a pencil, "through discarded newspapers, books and magazines, I taught them to read and speak"? Granted, that doesn't explain how Splinter himself learned to do as such (that part I haven't quite figured out myself just yet), but it's a fuck load better than, "they started talking"! Okay, calm blue ocean, calm blue ocean, calm blue ocean. You're the God of Death and Embalming. You kill people and take them to the afterlife reassignment line. Movies are not your fault. Scripts are not your doing. You are not a muse. Just... let... it... go............... Okay, I'm alright now. All linguistics enigmas aside, Splinter decided to name his new kids after Renaissance painters, hence Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello and Raphael. The origin varies with the cartoon's version, in that Splinter wasn't Splinter when he came to the sewers, but a disgraced ninja named Hamato Yoshi, who fled to America after being booted out of the Foot Clan when a rival named Oroku Saki set him up as the fall guy for an assassination attempt on their master. There he found the turtles, some rats, the ooze and a much better origin with less gaps in it's logic, as he himself used his own knowledge to teach his new pupils their fighting moves and speaking skills. Though none of this is really believable, you have to admit that it's at least a notch or two more likely than what the movie's giving us about a rat learning to fight by the old "monkey see, monkey do" philosophy and mutant turtles spontaneously learning English.

With their tale told and introductions made, the greenies take their new friend back to her apartment, where they hang out, eat pizza and Mikey gives her the giggles with a few movie impersonations... amazing how well the TV reception is in the sewers... Canned laughs and indigestion aside, when the boys make it back home, they find their rickety front door with a big hole in it (come on, was it really necessary to cut a hole in a door that looks like it could have either easily been kicked open or torn down completely?! There goes my bad ankle again, looks like another 2 days off from work... Yes, that pesky ninja reported back to his superiors and it looks like they made a house call while the heroes were out stuffing their big ugly faces with frozen pizzas. Splinter's gone, and with no one to take care of their still naive and emotionally vulnerable selves, they look to their new mother-friend figure for shelter and attention, crashing at her place for the night. Elsewheres, April's boss Charles Pennington gets a call from Chief Stern about his juvenile delinquent son Danny (who stole a twenty from April's purse during an earlier scene I didn't bother to mention at the time because I didn't feel it noteworthy... though now here I am wasting space by mentioning it anyway... dumbass). Obviously the Chief's got Chuck by the short 'n' curlies and wants him to force April into a corner so she'll back off of his case over the ninja crimewave and his department's ignorance on the matter, as Chuck and Danny pay O'Neil another visit the following morning. Not to leave the titular heroes out of any scene for too long, we get to watch in amusement as the four use their ninja arts to hide their four big shelled butts throughout April's little apartment, always an inch or second away from being caught.

April ignores Charlie's efforts to push her off the story and Danny (still wearing the same friggin' Sid Vicious shirt he's been wearing for at least the last three days) runs away when daddy threatens to discipline him after school. Where does a boy without a home go in the mean streets of New York? He heads to Foot Clan HQ, i.e. a big warehouse on the outskirts of the city where all the city's delinquents and junior criminals congregate to pool their stolen goods, smoke cigarettes, play their stolen NARC arcade machines, gamble, eat Whoppers and skate their in-house park... and the girls hang all over the guys like cheap sluts... I gotta find this place... In the back of the building is where it's at though, as the older and more combat oriented of the tribe train to become pajama wearers under the guidance of their trainer Master Tetsu and their armored big boss kingpin Master Shredder, who's far more volatile and Darth Vader-ian than his bumbling and Skeletor-ian animated counterpart. When Shreds orders a group meeting to honor the newest member of the pajama party, he makes a speech about how they must crush their new turtle adversaries. This is when Danny, in a different Sex Pistols t-shirt, speaks up and sells out April. Speaking of the boys in green, they're just sittin' around watchin' TV like a handful of slackers with no jobs leaching off their one friend who has a job (trust me, I've been on both sides of that coin). While Raph heads up to the roof to let off some steam over Splinter's kidnapping, he's spied by a neighbor, a certain ex-goalie neighbor, who witnesses a small army of Foot ninjas sneaking up on his little green pal from behind... and it looks like Danny isn't the only human character who goes days at a time without changing his clothes... what is this, an episode of "The Simpsons"?!

While Raph's getting his can walloped by overwhelming numbers, April introduces her new pals to her father's old antiques store, which she keeps open on weekends in memorium. Then, as if on cue, Raph returns... falling 20ft after being thrown through April's skylight. One of the movie's best action sequences ensues, as the remaining three must fend off the Foot army (much more dangerous than the KISS Army) while April's apartment and store are destroyed in the process. Best line here?
Donatello (while he and Mikey dodge numerous axe attacks): "Good thing these guys aren't lumberjacks!"
Michaelangelo: "No joke! The only thing safe in the woods (dodges another swing), would be the trees!"

Just when things look hopeless for Turtles Inc. stock futures and the building burns down around them, in comes the cavalry in the shape of that really weird looking hockey mask as Casey Jones comes in sticks a swingin', fending off the slumber party refugees while his new pals escape with Raph's bruised and battered butt in tow. Amusing moment of "only in the movies" irony here, as Chuck calls April to tell her she's fired, leaving the message on her machine like some puss boss I once knew. As he says "I know this comes as a blow", the machine, which has been hanging from it's cord this entire time, finally falls and konks one unlucky ninja in the noggin, prompting Casey to quip, "You can say that again Chuck". Mmmmmmmm, I love cheese. With the fuzz and fire officials finally showing up, Tatsu orders his boys to retreat and the good guys take April's van to safety. In the aftermath, Shredder interrogates Splinter as to how it is these reptiles know Ninjitsu, getting nothing from the rat's steel trap jaws. He also brow beats Tatsu for his failure, who in turn throws around several of his students in projection. As for Danny, after he witnesses April's apartment/antique store burn down due to his loose lips, you can already smell the grease on those morality wheels as they start turning in the other direction. To add a little momentum to the progression, Danny pays a visit to Splinter, who's more than happy to give the misguided youth a few motivational speeches and anecdotes.

Catching up to our heroes, they head out on an excursion the countryside of upstate to lick their wounds (as a wise old cliche once told me by the light of a Harvest Moon) at an old abandoned farmhouse owned by April's family. Jones makes a Grapes of Wrath joke in reference to the look of the place, but since I (and probably a good 97% of TMNT's target audience) haven't seen GoW, so that's one one-liner our writers didn't really earn their paycheck on. While the turtles recuperate (physically and spiritually), April and Casey get to work on their inevitable love-hate romance, ripe with insults, stories of their personal lives and sweaty deep tissue massage. Finally, while masturbating, err, "meditating" in the backyard one day, Leo gets a psychic telegram from Splinter, definitely NOT an image I'd like popping into my head when I'm holding my sausage hostage... though I have had weirder things invade my mind's eye during dolphin floggin' season...

This revelation prompts the four to hold a mental circle jerk around the ol' campfire that night, where their master materializes from the flames to tell them that with this they've finally accomplished their training in Ninjitsu, not only of their bodies, but of their minds and of their teamwork. Before heading back to his own body chained to a fence in a Long Island warehouse, Obi-Wan says a tearful goodbye and the quartet are now ready to go back home and step on a few feet... sorry, I know I said no foot jokes, but that one just slipped out. No more though, promise. And so, the gang heads back to the sewers of New York, where they find little Danny Turncoat crashing in their old lair. Casey turns his ignorance of phobia vocabulary into a half-hearted gay joke, Don and Mike give a moldy pizza an honorable send off and everyone crashes for the night. Meanwhile, it looks like Danny is up to his old hobby of slipping knives into people's backs again, as he slips out in the middle of the night to report back to Foot HQ. He's not alone though, cuz Casey sees him sneak off, and decides to do some gumshoe work, tailing him to delinquent central. While there, Danny has another convo with the Food of the Gods refugee (or "Willard's big brother", take which ever bad rat movie joke you like), where Splint tells the kid (who's been wearing his "new" Sex Pistols shirt for something like a week at this point...) about how he learned to fight by mimicking his master Hamato Yoshi (a.k.a. Splinter's human alias from the show again) and about the eventual murder of Yoshi and his beloved babe Tang Shin at the claws of the jealous Oroku Saki, from whom the two fled to America to escape Saki's obsession for Tang. Hey, I know where the man's coming from though. I like Tang� a lot myself, and more than once I've had to kill people for coming between us.

During the struggle, Splinter's cage was knocked open and he tried taking on the villainous ninja himself, using his rat ninja moves and disease riddled teeth and claws. Obviously that didn't stop Saki, who took a piece of the rat's ear with his katana, leaving the rodent to grieve over his lost family. Where's Saki now? Yeah, you guessed it, it's a small world after all, cuz Oroku Saki would later become none other than Don Rickles, following a name change and a rapid, disfiguring aging process! But, when he realized one Don Rickles in the world was already too much, he put on a metal helmet, glued a few blades to his shoulders and became The Shredder, evil leader of the new Foot Clan. And to think, all of this could've been averted, if only Saki had played the part of rodent exterminator instead of just a human one, all those years ago. Shredder walks in on the pow-wow and finds Danny, his Foot headband discarded on the floor and a drawing of Leonardo done by April sitting in Danny's pocket... smart one kid. Instead of putting a few of his plentiful pig-stickers through the double agent, Shreds lets the punk go, probably greatly offended by the horrible reeking odors of the boy's shirt, and orders Tatsu to kill Splints while he gathers the troops and goes to deal with his enemies personally this time. Casey takes Tat out with a 1 wood swing that would make Lee Travino squirt and he and Splinter give the rest of the vagrants there an after school special about the importance of family and staying true to yourself and drinking milk and not doing drugs and staying in school and having safe sex and not forgetting your mother's birthday and doing your homework and reporting child abuse and not tampering with other peoples' mail and not drinking beer before you reach legal age to become an alcoholic and not watching Adam Sandler movies and not littering and not stealing and not watching reruns of "The A-Team" for the rest of your life or you'll go blind and looking both ways when you cross the street and learning how to stop going on pointless tangents when you're supposed to be reviewing a movie...

As the rodent rescue team head back to the lair, Shredder and friends are already trading blows with the boys. Unlike the surprise attack at April's, the turtles are ready for the attack this time, and they're also at full force, meaning this melee is more like a 10 minute exercise in quipping and ass kicking using the buddy system. These foot guys may not be the pushovers they seem though, as the turtles give no second thoughts to following the escaping foes up the fire escape of a nearby building to it's roof. Well, turns out there IS a purpose for leading the shellbacks up to this particular roof, and that reason has a metal helmet, knives on his shoulder and hands, and used to go by the name Don Rickles... and no, it's not Don Rickles... cuz he's still Don Rickles... unless he's dead by now, I haven't really been keeping tabs... though on occasion I do drink Tab�... though they do not endorse myself, my website or my reviews... unlike Jack Daniels�... So, let's all have a half-gallon of Jack & Cola (but not Tab� brand cola remember) and wrap this up, shall we!

And now the turtles fight Shredder. Instead of using the always strategic (despite it's roots of cowardice) "dog pile" method of beating the bad guy all at once, the bros. instead get their asses kicked single file, until Leo winds up pinned to the floor alone, Shredder's pike to his throat. The others comply with Shred's demands to throw their weapons over the side of the roof, thus dooming them all instead of just Leo. Before he can shish-kabob the troublesome terrapins though, who should arrive in knick-o-time fashion but Splinter who, despite the ravaged look of his muppet form, can apparently scale fire escapes like any healthy young rat mutant his size. Instead of going for the kill on the reptiles like everyone from the author of "The Art of War" to General Patton would've done, Saki instead lets himself be distracted by Splinters words that he was once the pet of Hamato Yoshi. Touching the nasty looking claw marks on his face, Saki lunges at the rat, looking for revenge for 15 years of chicks laughing at his when he told them how he really got those scars, and is somehow surprised when the rodent simply sidesteps him, sending the bad guy over the side with his own momentum (and a little help from Michelangelo's discarded nunchauks, that happened to get hung up on the fire escape on the way down) and into the back of a garbage truck, where Mr. Jones awaits to put the truck's compactor to good use, crushing the bad guy in a cube of New York's infamous trash and refuse... and probably a hobo or two that were sleeping in the back of the truck for the night. Speaking of which, who leaves a New York Sanitation Department garbage truck unattended in the street at night?!

With the villain vanquished, the day is saved. April gets her job back at a huge pay increase, she and Casey find love in each others' arms (or at least a one-night stand between friends), Danny and Chuck are reunited with Danny giving up his criminal ways (and even paying April back that twenty he stole), the cops get the credit for the bust and the turtles have Splinter back once more. But, it wouldn't be a nice little package without a round of buzzword chanting, ending on Splinter, who "makes a funny" when he says, "I have always liked, 'cowabunga'"... sounds more like he "makes a #2" than a funny, but it's an obligatory happy ending and I'm good with that.

Though not one to harp on plot holes, there were points in this movie that even a cosmic consciousness like mine own was sent reeling to the ropes and asking "what?!", "how?!" and "huh?!" way too many times to forgive. I've already mentioned these points throughout the review, so if you need to check back in with what they were exactly, you'll have to skim back through, cuz I see no need to be listing them here for a second time, when this review is already longer than most of my ADDed audience would be able to keep up to speed with. The turtles suffered from a bad case of Godzilla Lip, but considering this was the early '90s and Jim Henson's people were handling the turtles instead of some geeks at a computer console, you can forgive the imprecise lip synching. As for the turtles themselves, considering they did come from Jim Henson's Creature Shop, you know they're quality, and they very much are. Their mouths and eyes move realistically enough, and I didn't notice any signs of tearing or heavy wear down on any of them during the high action. Oh, and Kudos to the guys inside the suits. The moves they manage to pull off with those big foam rubber monstrosities on are incredible. When's the last time you saw a guy in a Godzilla suit doing roundhouse kicks and commando rolls? Exactly. The fight choreography for the whole movie was nice work. Point-and-click direction, nothing special really. Some decent shots during the action scenes, but not a whole lot of meat in that seat. Oddly enough the generic techno/hip hop/r&b music seems to work, as do the actual songs when in context. When's the last time I could listen to an M.C. Hammer creation and say that it "worked in it's context"? Not since The Funky Headhunter... then again, I just like saying "funky headhunter".

Though never seen in the original animated series, I felt like a freshman getting a bj from the head varsity cheerleader to see Casey Jones make it into the movie. One of the lead supporting cast of the original Mirage published TMNT series, it's great that the hockey mask wearing vigilante made it through to the final product, despite potential parental concerns that a guy who takes his fashion tips from Jason Vorhees and his stance on crime from Dirty Harry. Come to think of it, this movie was a lot darker in tone than your typical "kiddie flick", and had a lot more in common with the comic than the 'toon. You could really call it a "fanboy flick" more than a "kiddie flick"... which still makes enjoying it a geek thing, I'm just trying to make my pleasure less weinery and more "alternative-retro"... just give me that little break, huh?! Not the best comicbook movie, but far far from the worst. A few tweaks to the script, tone down the blatant product endorsements, maybe a little more time into making Splinter look a little livelier, perhaps a little more time in the gym for the guy playing Shredder, or maybe just a sleeker costume and helmet. Hindsight's 20/20 though, and having never made a movie myself, I don't know about the limitations the crew had to deal with, so I won't slight anybody.