DVDFile

Ah, the Turtles. Dusty relics of a cheesy pre-90s cultural Zeitgeist? Somehow intelligent broad entertainment? Who knows?

Well, for anyone curious about this long-winded franchise, Warner has readied a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Film Collection Blu-ray Disc set, an edition that houses all three of the Turtles' first three films and their recent reboot.

First up here is the eponymous cinematic debut from the young tortoises: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990). The story of this one goes something like this: After contact with the mysterious ooze, four turtles and a sewer rat are turned into mutants. Armed with the wise guidance of Master Splinter (a feral, furry version of Mr. Miyagi), human sidekicks April (Judith Hoag) and Casey Jones (Elias Koteas!), and a taste for pizza, they band together to fight crime in New York City and defeat their arch nemesis, Shredder. Needless to say, good triumphs over evil, and our heroic quartet lives on to fight in the sequel....

By the time we get to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II (1991), it's all about "The Secret of the Ooze" and just where our tenacious turtles really came from. Koteas bailed out, Hoag was replaced by the peppier Page Turico, and would you believe David Warner as a nebbish scientist helping the ooze-enhanced Shredder once again try to conquer New York? Without music video wiz Steve Barron at the helm, television director Michael Pressman took over and adds little flash; it's just more of the same, only less inspired. I suppose it's a sad fact when the highlight of your movie is a climatic club fight scene featuring a cameo by Vanilla Ice!

Only two years passed until Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III (1993), but it might as well have been ten. Those fickle teens just didn't care anymore, and this one proved the law of Hollywood three-peats: quit while you're ahead (see Beverly Hills Cop III, Poltergeist III, Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles, etc.). In way that's a shame, because with the Turtles in the big city concept fully played out, it's off on a little time travel adventure back to Japan, which gives the series a much-needed change of scenery. Also gone is the lame white-boy rap of Part II, now replaced by equally-lame white boy lite-metal, as if the producers suddenly started listening to Poison instead of Vanilla Ice. The action sequences are at least a little more lively and well-staged this time out, but it's just too little, too late.

And then we get the reboot: TMNT (2007) is the kind of CGI, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers mess that this writer's brain has trouble understanding. The story is nothing new - city's in trouble, bad guys abound, Turtles must save the day - but now, instead, of being lovably pseudo-Muppet on-screen caricatures, the Turtles are all computer-made, and their rubbery new incarnation makes them far less endearing - like they're rejects from Zemeckis' Beowulf instead of Henson's Dark Crystal.

But after doing a bit of research, it seems like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fans dug the new flick for the most part, and it's that crowd this Blu-ray collection is designed to please.

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