Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles®

Based on the popular comic book series, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles® follows the title characters (Josh Pais’ Raphael, Robbie Rist’s Michaelangelo, Corey Feldman’s Donatello, and Brian Tochi’s Leonardo) as they team up with a tenacious reporter (Judith Hoag’s April O’Neil) and a scrappy vigilante (Elias Koteas’ Casey Jones) after their master (Kevin Clash’s Splinter) is kidnapped by a vicious crime lord known as The Shredder (James Saito). It goes without saying that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles® fares best in its opening half hour, as filmmaker Steve Barron initially does a nice job of establishing the off-kilter scenario and the quartet of enthusiastic protagonists (although, having said that, there’s little doubt that that all four characters remain hopelessly interchangeable from start to finish). It’s only as the movie limps into its progressively sluggish midsection that one’s interest begins to wane, with the ensuing lack of momentum effectively highlighting the various deficiencies within Todd W. Langen and Bobby Herbeck’s screenplay (eg the two primary human characters are barely developed beyond their most superficial attributes). And while kids will surely get a kick out of the film’s myriad of comically-tinged fight sequences, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles® ultimately comes off as an uneven, needlessly episodic adaptation that simply isn’t able to justify its feature-length running time.

*1/2 out of ****