Release Date: 1990
Running Time: A horribly long 90 minutes
Rating: NR
Starring: WHO CARES!
My friends, this is a painful watch. By the end of this piece of dogmeat you’re about to bust with painful laughter because you cannot believe your eyes as you have watched this utterly wrong slice of film crap. Seriously, I have never laughed so hard over something this badly made. But maybe I should go into better, fairer detail first…
Ok, first thing is that this is the brainchild of some horribly DISTURBED person who wanted to see the Ninja Turtles in a rock and roll concert. Seriously. It’s the four boys in rock drag, playing guitars and keyboards, onstage before a huge crowd of drooling bed wetters and their mommies, singing songs and performing a show that wouldn’t see the light of day in the more sane era of the 2000s, at least I hope so.
This movie is a live show of a concert in NYC, and the turtles basically perform a movie-length, hokey musical play, rockstar style. The turtles all wear gay jackets and TENNIS SHOES! I swear, they’re wearing sneakers over their feet, which are WAY too small! The Ninja turtles could never WEAR human shoes, but for the sake of the performers (or for the look of their costumes) they ditched bare footedness.
They come out singing songs that would make any true rock and roll artist squirm, and they each play a respective instrument. Mikey appears to be the head of the band, and he also does most of the singing. Unfortunately he is the most annoying of the bunch, for after every song he repeats again and again, “THANK YOU! WE LOVE YOU! THANK YOU! WE LOVE YOU! THANK---!” you get the idea. I think it might have been purposefully done to be annoying, and it REALLY works! The voices for all of the turtles are lousy save for Leonardo, who is done by the same guy as did it in the old cartoon show. Splinter’s voice is the same too, at least for speaking parts.
Yes, you guessed it. Even SPLINTER gets to sing! AAAAHHHHH!!!! I felt like I lost weight as I watched it and laughed. My body tingles with painful convulsions just thinking about it. Anyway, eventually Shredder has to pop in to mess things up, and I have never seen such a hokey interpretation of our old buddy Oroku Saki. The actor (if that term can be applied) has these odd painted eyebrows that look wholly feminine and bizarre, because they’re SPIKY!!!! WHAT?! The whole show defies logic and reason, but that’s just one small example.
Also Baxter Stockman makes a cameo, and I have in all my years NEVER seen such an act. He’s a thinly little geek who actually looks pretty close to the old show Stockman, but the freak runs by kicking his ankles forward and rapidly skittering across the stage, which is just amazingly bizarre. Also he has a few lines, and laughs villainously. It is the most shrill, horrible, annoying laugh you will ever HOPE to hear in your natural life. But beyond that, he and the Foot ninjas are assigned the task of setting up this machine (which looks remarkably like a set of stage fans…gah!) to, and I swear to my loving God this is true, “steal” all the music in the world. You read that right. You did not just catch a misprint. Shredder hates music, so he’s on a crusade to take over the world by stealing all of the music in the world, starting with the music in that theater. Sweet mother of all that is holy.
So to that end, Shredder steals April O’Neil’s voice, who is actually a good actress compared to all the rest of this tripe, though even she might not get onto Days of Our Lives, and sends the turtles into exile below the stage whilst he prepares to rob the world of music. The turtles retreat, but promise their interactive audience that they’ll be back to whoop Shredder’s can.
Now it gets REEEEEEEEALLY good. Shredder takes 10 freaking minutes out of his life to assault the audience with verbal threats, and teases them. I’ve never rolled my eyes so much in my life. I thought I was high watching this. Shredder picked on KIDS in the front rows, making STUPID jokes and remarks like a lousy insult comic. It defies words, utterly so.
Then the BEST part of all, and here I was on the floor howling in tears. The Shredder, after all his crap about hating music, went so far as to have a rap number, SINGING about how he hates MUSIC!!!! WHAT THE CRAP IS THAT!!!!!!! God truly has abandoned NYC, it must be true…
Anyway, as you guessed it, the Turtles go back up to beat the crap out of the Shredder and some token Foot, save April’s voice, and with the help of their kindergarten fans send the baddies out of the bad production (lucky for them) and save all the music in the world. Yay! Thus all is well for music, and the world has just been subjected to the worst show in Radio City history, or close to it.
Seriously, I didn’t know what I was getting into with this thing, but I could never have dared dream how bad it would be. This was part of a 40 city tour back in 90, I’m guessing to help promote the 1990 movie which was a millennium better than this! Every two minutes there seemed to be a song, and every character worth his or her salt sang one. Some of the songs were catchy to a minor degree, while others were either filler or just plain terrible. They tried to chock this thing full of good morality and messages for the little kids, but it was mostly just recycled or new age garbage, like “believe in yourself, and believe in the music, and you will bring peace to the world!”
Apparently music is such a powerful force, as hyped in this show, that if everyone on the face of the planet would listen to it there would be universal peace and understanding and unified brotherhood. All you need do is listen to the music, and there’s NOTHING you can’t do!
Somebody kill me.
No one review can truly tell how bad this is, and no one but the littlest child or the most avid TMNT fan can long stand it. It does work as a disturbing inducer of hysterical laughter. You just can’t naturally come up with stuff this funny because it’s so unbelievable. You have to be one of the well meaning but sadly misguided people who made this load of turtle crap, thinking it would make their careers. Either that, or more likely they just spent one night scribbling together a set of songs and dialogue thinking that no matter what it would be a hit because TMNT was so popular at that time. I tend to believe that theory more.
At the end of the day I hope this review either makes you want to avoid this like a leper or go find one of these rare tapes and watch it every time you feel depressed. It may send your mind the way of white jackets and stone walls, but you’ll have laughed. Just one more weird and twisted chapter in the expansive TMNT universe, and one that I’m sure Eastman and Laird are still having nightmares over.
Ok, I know this is a stage play and a musical, but I’m still going to review the technical side.
What else can I say? It was a vehicle for the characters and the
environment they were in on the stage.
(what's this?)
don’t go there.
1/2
Some minor screen wipe effects and some stage effects
Some people say God and Shredder says “PUKE!” hehehehehe.
I might have found the tunes better back in the day, but MAN did the lyrics
and performances bite!
(what's this?)
big fat whooping zero of quality,
and that’s coming from a die hard TMNT lover. But hey, some zeros are still good. It depends on
YOU. As for me, this will collect much dust and maybe come out when I want to
cry so hard from laughing that I’ll need a bucket for all the vomit to follow.