It is my opinion that "TMNT" is as good a movie about teenage mutant ninja turtles as there can possibly be. The protagonists are mutated turtles who have learned martial arts, have grown to the size of adult humans, and have learned English. I really think B- is as good as you're going to get with this premise. "TMNT" is aimed at two audiences: 12-year-old boys, and grown men who loved the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in the early 1990s, when they were 12-year-old boys. I did not pay attention to the TMNT phenomenon until much later, when I watched the 1990 feature film and was impressed with how bad it was. What I called "bad," though -- lame jokes, hole-filled plot, clownish acting, etc. -- was apparently what many fans LIKED about it. So take it for what it's worth when I say the new "TMNT" film is a lot like its predecessors. One way it's better, however, is that it's animated. It never made sense to make live-action films about characters who never looked remotely convincing when played by actors in rubber suits. "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" began life as a comic book, then became an animated TV series; it should have stayed animated. You accept a lot more simplicity, silliness, and just plain dumbness with a cartoon than you do with live-action.
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