by lhb412 » Sun Jan 27, 2013 2:41 pm
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Bar none, my favorite film as a kid, and it still holds up! One of the most faithful comic book adaptations, what you get in this movie is basically a mash-up of stuff from the first 11 or so issues of the comic, and I personally think that this is one of those adaptations that improves upon the source material. It's as good as the best issue of the comic and it has the advantage of adapting what were very early issues, where the creators were finding out who the characters were and just plain figuring out how to make a comic - as such those comics have an inspired but ramshackle feel. This film approaches that material as a rough draft and refines the story, making it make a whole lot more sense.
It's quite a miracle that this film exists in this way at all. Despite being a pop-culture juggernaut at the time the truth is that it's a very quirky and idiosyncratic story, but this movie does everything right: the grungy, dirtiness; the bizarre mixture of martial arts, sci-fi, and family comedy; switching from grittiness to gags, often in the same scene; and a terrific cast! Elias Koteas is an underrated character actor.