Jonathan<\/a> and I have been taking turns choosing movies we care about a lot to share with each other; both of us getting to catch up on a lot we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve missed. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re posting about a selected ones of these films on our blogs.<\/b><\/p>\nThe Movie<\/h3>\n
Movie: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie<\/em>
\nInfo: 1990 USA. Director: Steve Barron. Starring: Judith Hoeg, Elias Koteas, Josh Pais, Michelan Sisti, Leif Tilden, David Forman, Corey Feldman, Robbie Rist.
\nChooser: Jonathan
\nDate and Method Watched: May 14, on DVD<\/p>\nHe Says\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/h3>\n
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie<\/em> is one of those films you bring out to the significant other with hesitation. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m reminded of an episode of How I Met Your Mother<\/em> where one of Ted\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s (many) issues was showing his girlfriend Star Wars<\/em> for the first time. Would she be all over it, or would she laugh at all the ridiculous puppetry and special effects? How would that affect the relationship? As it turned out, she actually DIDN\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T like the movie, but was able to appreciate it because Ted loved it. And while I wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t say I hold TMNT:TM<\/em> to a similar level of excellence, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d be lying if I said I wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t kind of nervous about showing off this treasured piece of childhood to my wife. I mean, what if she DIDN\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T like it?<\/p>\nWell, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll let her fill you in on what she thought. What I will add are some thoughts from our recent re-watch. As it turns out, TMNT:TM<\/em> has aged a lot better than I was expecting it to. Having not seen it for almost ten years, I was partially ready to start apologizing for this part and that, much like I would for something like Super Mario Brothers<\/em>. The puppetry and special effects held up quite nicely, hitting a realism at times that most CGI still has trouble getting right. The dated elements were more charming than cheesy, and the more somber moments still hit the absolute sweet spot for me \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Raphael\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s and Splinter\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s private conversation being the prime example. The overall goofiness held up as well, and remains the part that makes this film near and dear to my heart.<\/p>\nNow to dust off my copy of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze<\/em> and cross my fingers once more!<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/TMNT-2.jpg\" "\\"TMNT-2\\"")
<\/p>\n
She Says\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/h3>\n
Of all the movies Jonathan kept mentioning to me as his touchstone movies growing up, the kind of cheesy but fun movies that he has strong emotional connections to, this one initially gave me the most pause. I was like, really, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re going to eventually make me watch a movie about overgrown talking turtles who break out ninja moves and eat pizza? Yet when it came down to it, it was actually me who suggested we go ahead and take the plunge. And I was actually kind of weirdly excited about it, too. Probably it was the somewhat scary degree to which I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve gotten into comics and superheroes lately, and with enough comic books under my belt, the mental jump to mutant ninja turtles apparently isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t actually that large.<\/p>\n
And you know what, I actually quite enjoyed the film. Sure, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s cheesy, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s very much a product of its time, but those things give it a quaint charm that may not be exactly what the creators were going for at the time, but made it work for me now anyway. Definitely the kind of film you just have to give yourself over to, though, what with the mixture of an investigative journalism story and, well, mutant ninja turtles. Between the goofiness of the turtles, the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153gangs are bad!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d message, the meet-cute of the logically incompatible love interests, and the over-earnest wisdom of the giant rat Splinter, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a lot here that could easily be turn-offs, but thankfully (for both my evening and my marriage!), I just found it all pretty endearing. Up to and including the special effects, which are actually much better than I expected. I like practical effects anyway, and the puppets and animatronic elements are right up my alley, and the puppet work on the turtles\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 faces is quite good.<\/p>\n
All in all, I expected to at most enjoy it as a so-bad-it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s-good movie, but I actually enjoyed it for real. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll get to the sequel soon enough, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll get more ooze than I know what do to with (this is starting to sound like a not-very-subtle euphemism, so I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m gonna stop right there).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My husband Jonathan and I have been taking turns choosing movies we care about a lot to share with each other; both of us getting to catch up on a lot we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve missed. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re posting about a selected ones of these films on our blogs. The Movie Movie: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie Info: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31577,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2,2434],"tags":[2653],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/TMNT-1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":265,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2007\/03\/trailer-watch-opening-march-23-2007\/","url_meta":{"origin":31576,"position":0},"title":"Trailer Watch – Opening March 23, 2007","author":"Jandy","date":"March 20, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been struggling to figure out how best to showcase upcoming films--if I use IMDb's release schedule, it's sometimes hard to find the trailers. If I use the trailer sites, it's sometimes difficult to get correct release dates. Even so, how do I deal with limited release films that may\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Film"","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":35358,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2015\/10\/letterboxd-season-challenge-the-big-parade-1925\/","url_meta":{"origin":31576,"position":1},"title":"Letterboxd Season Challenge: The Big Parade (1925)","author":"Jandy","date":"October 9, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Film 5 for the Letterboxd Season Challenge. The other films I plan to watch for the challenge are here. Week 5: PUNQ Week Challenge: Watch an unseen feature that ranked in the top ten on any of PUNQ\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pre-1940 lists. Film I Chose: The Big Parade PUNQ is a Letterboxd\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Film"","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/tf-feat-big-parade-3.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":35351,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2015\/10\/letterboxd-season-challenge-its-a-mad-mad-mad-mad-world-1963\/","url_meta":{"origin":31576,"position":2},"title":"Letterboxd Season Challenge: It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963)","author":"Jandy","date":"October 8, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Film 4 for the Letterboxd Season Challenge. The other films I plan to watch for the challenge are here. Week 4, Sep 27-Oct 3: 60's Blockbuster Week Challenge: Watch an unseen film from among the Top 50 Highest Grossing Movies of the 1960s. My Choice: It's a Mad Mad Mad\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Film"","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/tf-mad-mad-2.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":31407,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2012\/06\/scorecard-may-2012\/","url_meta":{"origin":31576,"position":3},"title":"Scorecard: May 2012","author":"Jandy","date":"June 5, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Apparently I turned a corner in moviewatching in May, finally having a solid streak of films I really liked to loved. I think there were a few months earlier this year that I struggled to come up with any films that a solidly loved. Obviously not last month with the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Film"","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/Avengers12.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":32565,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2013\/02\/favorite-older-films-i-saw-in-2012\/","url_meta":{"origin":31576,"position":4},"title":"Favorite Older Films I Saw in 2012","author":"Jandy","date":"February 11, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Always an awkward post title, but I can never seem to manage to figure out a good way to sum up the kind of list I'm presenting here. My list of Top 2012 Films is included in the Row Three group post over here, and to be perfectly honest, this\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Film"","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/GirlShy-feat.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":34099,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2014\/05\/he-says-she-says-the-frighteners-1996\/","url_meta":{"origin":31576,"position":5},"title":"He Says, She Says: The Frighteners (1996)","author":"Jandy","date":"May 8, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"[In this series, my husband Jonathan and I each write our reactions to films we watch together. Many of these films are ones that one of us is specifically sharing with the other, but it may also just be films that we watch and want to write about.] The Movie\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "He Says She Says"","block_context":{"text":"He Says She Says","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/he-says-she-says\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/hsss-Frighteners-feat.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31576"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31576\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/TMNT-1.jpg\" "\\"TMNT-1\\"")
<\/p>\n