Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is over twenty years old now, and the line on premier night at the theater reflected that -- it was a solid mix of first and second generation fans. As a child of the 80's, I fall into the first category. I grew up on Turtles, and I still have a Leonardo action figure in a bookshelf in my office. (It sits right next to Starscream and a My Little Pony. Yes, I'm a geek who played with both the boy and girl toys. Got a problem with that? Anyway ...)

TMNT is one of those things that people either understand or they don't. I'm not sure what else was premiering that night, but there was, apparently, some other movie that also had a line. A couple joined the queue behind me and my friends, then asked, "What movie is this line for?"

"Turtles," sez I.

Blank look, they gave.

"Teenage Mutant Ninja," I prompted.

Sniff! Horrors! Turtles! was their instant reaction as they almost flinched in disbelief that there could be a few dozen people queued up to watch a cartoon. They scurried off to their correct line, practically blushing with humiliation at being caught associating with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fans, and I was amused. They obviously fell into the 'I don't get it ..." camp.

TMNT is campy. It's silly. It's a ridiculous premise with goofy characters and a healthy dose of sarcasm. I mean, c'mon, it's about a mutant rat that teaches mutant turtles to be ninjas.

But if your humor bends that way, Turtles is great fun.

This incarnation of Turtles more or less lived up to franchise's standards. Granted, it's not exactly the highest bar in the world (and I say this with a great deal of affection for Turtles) but if you 'got' the humor in the cartoons, comics or the movies it's worth the price of admission.  

The effects are great, for the animation of the turtles. It's a definite improvement over the guys in rubber suits, while still keeping the feel of the live-action movies. There are a few really excellent moments -- a fight the rain between Leonardo and Raphael is probably the movie's best moment. Very well drawn and some interesting character development and a nice (if not entirely unexpected) twist at the end.

I was less enthusiastic about the animation of the humans. Casey was okay, but April O'Neal looked like a Bratz doll. She was annoyingly drawn -- though Sarah Michelle Gellar did a fine job voice acting, as did Chris Evans as Casey. I hope we'll see more of her as a voice actor in the future because she's good at it.

Patrick Stewart as the antagonist Max Winters worked as well, but, dude, it's Patrick Stewart. I'm not even sure I need to mention that he did a great job. When has Patrick Stewart not done a great job?

The biggest gripe I have about this movie was the plot. Granted, it's Turtles, so I wasn't expecting a Shakespearian level of storytelling. However, the plot tried to do too much. There were multiple story arcs poorly woven together  -- you had a three thousand year old villain in Max Winters who just wanted to send the monsters home so he could die, a poorly explained appearance by the Foot and Karai, and another plot with the Turtles breaking up and then coming back together as a family.

There were also some fairly major plot holes and moments where the characters had to be idiots for the plot to work. For example, Leonardo really should have figured out Raphael's secret identity the moment he saw a turtle-shaped guy wearing a suit of armor. He definitely would have known who it was when he started fighting said Turtle-shaped guy. I mean, c'mon, Casey figured it out. During the course of the movie there were multiple instances of this sort of sillyness.

The plot really should have been pruned a bit before production and the details better thought out. It just boiled down to too much story and not enough time to tell it in.

However, on the whole, this was a fun, enjoyable, lighthearted movie -- it's a good film for watching with friends. Turtles has some funny moments, is a nice reprisal of some very familiar characters and, ultimately, it was worth the price of admission.