Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990)

Everyone's favorite teenage mutant ninja turtle, Picasso.

Some loved Transformers. Others loved Masters of the Universe. But for many of us, the one franchise that took America by storm and Canada by the antlers has to be Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. TMNT had it all: violence, ninja action, turtles, pizza, ninja adventure, weapons, a brain in a robot body, ninja excitement, fight sequences, a comic book, ninja skills, cartoon, video games, ninja stars, and I believe a ninja at one point in the whole franchise. Though high and mighty the franchise was, it was lacking something important. If it wanted to defeat the other fads present during the early 1990s, like Garfield, Pokemon, and Milli Vanilli, they needed something new, exciting, and excitingly new to keep it's demographic of kids, pre-teens, and teenage pre-kids, all of which wanted to one day become either a firefighter or a turtle for their ideal career. They needed a movie. A movie so epic and monsterous that it would break the box office into many pieces, two of those pieces being that of the movie itself. It had to be a movie so great that it couldn't defeat itself in an arm wrestling match, because it would only have one arm and that one arm is not a literal arm, so it could never get in an arm wrestling match in the first place.

The movie, unlike the cartoon and comic, was a live-action movie, meaning they had to draw each frame individually and feed it through a camera at lightning fast speeds. The results was many broken hands from the animators, partially because animator's arms are made out of bone, not solid granite, and mostly because drawing a live-action cartoon required the animators to draw at speeds that defied the laws of precious physics. Hence, actors were used instead of drawings. Actors were a new thing back in 1990, because actors, unlike cartoon characters, worked for this thing called money, and required trivial and insane new concepts such as eating, sleeping, using the toilet, and sleep-eating on the toilet. The cast was comprised of many actors nobody has ever heard of, such as Judith Hoag as the vivacious Irish woman, April O'Neil, and Bea Arthur reprising her role as an evil bitch in the form of Shredder.

Actual screenshot from the movie.

The premise behind Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a simple one. April, who is reporting on the scandelous mishaps of United States President George McGovern, has discovered a link between McGovern and a strange ooze that turns flowers into bigger flowers, and turns rats into older, taller, English-speaking rats. After the amazing 20-minute fight sequence between McGovern and Elvis Presley over the World Presidential Title, we learn that under the sewers lives more than just crocodiles and Steve Irwin, as the strange ooze has turned four turtles into giant, kung-fu fighting, fast-as-lightning, English-speaking, pizza-eating sons of guns, possibly the sons of a Winchester or a Smith & Wesson. They learn from their decomposed rat friend, Splinter, that martial arts should only be used against Bea Arthur and her hoards of minions known as "The Foot," a group of angst teenage kids that steal cassette-players and Sex Pistol albums for their own fiendish greed, as they recite goth poetry over a glowing Double Dragon arcade machine and a bottle of Jack Daniels, preaching such delightful tales such as the downfall of society and the tightened mall security over skateboards in recent weeks.

Pictured above is renowned explorer and all-around nogoodnik, Casey Jones.

While this motley gang of hoodlums and Curt Kobain rejects loot the city of New York blind with their new-found love of the martial arts and all things not involving the purchase of real weapons outside of their $2 allowances, April falls into a sewer or something, and meets up with the turtles, who teach the values of kicking ass and eating pizza in a dirty, rat-infested sewer system. After contracting AIDS fourteen times by accidentally stepping on discarded hyperdermic needles in the underwater world of the sewers, April meets up with Casey Jones, a guy who is a big fan of Jason Voorhees of Friday The 13^th fame, gets kidnapped by Bea Arthur and his dark ministry of darkness, and accidentally leading the demented hoards of angst ninjas into the sewers, where Splinter gets kidnapped as well. Will they all survive? How will the turtles save the day? Is Bea Arthur still alive? Do goths live in their parent's basements or do they live in communes like the hippies did, only instead of growing plants and pot, they're growing black roses and lost hopes? Will I ever stop being a jackass? Rent this movie to find out now!

This movie is rated PG for violence, angst, and Bea Arthur not being in the movie at all, but you know that if she was in the movie, it'd be rated RRRRRRR for Bea Arthur and her undead corpse frightening all who look upon her.