31 Days of Horror: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie – An excerpt by Fury

First off, there is something you should know about me, I don’t like horror movies.  That is Rage’s cup of tea.  Horror movies are just to g darn scary for me.  I like having a peaceful night sleep, not one haunted by Freddy Kruegar and the hockey goalie from the Detroit Red Wings.  I mean hockey gives me nightmares as it is, why would you put a hockey mask on a deranged killer and give me ANOTHER reason not to want to watch winter sports?  Thanks, Hollywood, for making me feel less patriotic every four years…  Long story short, Rage has a late class two nights per week.  Translation: I will be writing about non-horror movies two nights per week.  This week’s movie is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie.

Every guy who grew up in the late 80s/early 90s remembers the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoons.  It was only logical that a movie would be made.  However, unlike the cartoon and the subsequent sequels, I still thoroughly enjoy the original TMNT movie to this day.  It’s actually a well thought out movie, and much darker than you might think.  I mean, if four ninja turtles lived in New York and battled with a Japanese crime lord in real life, it wouldn’t be all fun and games like a cartoon.  The defining characteristics that make this film enjoyable are simple: violence and swearing.  It sounds barbaric and unintelligent, but would The Departed have been as great of a movie if they shook hands and squirted each other with water guns the whole time?  The cursing and serious consequences of the fighting give it a sense of reality (as much reality as a movie with four crime fighting turtles can have), which in turn causes the audience to emotionally connect with the film.  When Rafael gets thrown through the glass roof and spends the next several days in a coma, we understand that people can really get hurt in this world.  In the cartoon and even in the sequels, the fighting is more of a game with no consequences than a reality.  In my opinion this is a good thing, better for young, impressionable minds to see what violence is really about rather than providing a false sense of fun-and-games where it doesn’t belong.

In summary, this non-horror flick is a great one to watch with the kids or a guy of any age.  From hilarious lines (“Wise man say: Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza”) to action, to emotions, to life lessons (as taught by Splinter), this movie has it all.  In my unbiased rating system, it receives 9.7 stars out of 10.