So I Saw TMNT

One of my New Year's resolutions is to see more movies- not necessarily in the theater (though so far, I have)-- but *period*. It just seems like I hadn't seen many the past few years.

Anyway. I was looking forward to TMNT for a while- I've been a fan of the franchise off and on for a long time, and hey! CGI!

This was a really good film. It's kind of a "family" film-- i.e. for kids-- but not entirely. (There wasn't anything too adult-themed or violent or scary or anything, but it didn't have the more puerile elements of some kid's movies, like annoying sidekicks and youth-identification characters.) It had a lot of action, some neat character stuff, some genuinely funny moments (but not too many for an action-drama)... And it was really a family film in that the main theme was family. Both the Turtles and the main protagonists dealt with that issue in different ways, and the "main" villain, while kind of built up as a nasty, evil guy, really isn't. Not so his henchmen/co-workers. That was kind of neat.

From a technical standpoint, the CGI was quite good. Much better than the Muppet-suits of the previous three TMNT films (though that's a very low bar), for starters. I'm something of a fan of traditional/cel animation, but the CGI in this flick was well done. In one scene, it starts to rain, and you can see the individual droplets on the characters, for example.

So while I didn't have great expectations for this film (having seen the previous films, cringed at the memory of the 80's cartoon and the "Fast Forward" iteration of the current [and also otherwise quite enjoyable] series, and read many of the original comics), I did want to see it, and I'm glad I did.