TMNT (HD DVD)

The sticker on the front says "2007 Hit CGI Movie" and considering the film did make about $93 million worldwide on a production budget of only $34 million I am inclined to say it was a hit, but not so much of a hit that we have heard about a sequel. Unfortunately I think TMNT is coming a little too late as the audience that used to love the turtles has grown up and doesn't want the kiddy flick we got with this installment. On top of that this film isn't good enough to draw in a lot of newbies.

Instead of starting off at the beginning of the Turtle's story, TMNT decides to start off where the previous feature films left off. Shedder is dead and Leonardo is off in the jungle doing some training while Michelangelo, Raphael and Donatello stay home and begin distancing themselves from one another. The team is no longer a cohesive unit and that is no good as new baddies stroll into town comprised of ancient stone statues and scary monsters. You can go ahead and guess what happens and what must be done.

Silly pratfalls and goofy jokes really turn this flick into an 87 minute version of what the 30 minute cartoon used to be, it just looks much better as the CGI is nearly flawless. On HD DVD there is a zoom feature and even a 4x the original size the picture is damn near perfect, it wasn't until 8x that the images began getting blurry. Impressive is the word I was looking for, but visuals don't make a film. While this one isn't terrible there is nothing to brag home about. You don't want to jab a fork in your eye after you watch it, but watching it again isn't first on the list.

Feature wise you are getting the same features on this HD DVD as you will on the DVD version and they aren't really all that impressive and I don't really think there is anything they could have done that actually would have been impressive.

You get your standard group of deleted scenes, which in animated films usually results in animatics or storyboards, here you get a mix of final product, animatics and storyboards. Beyond that you get a bit more pre-vis, storyboards and generic featurettes all of which you could probably make at home if given enough time. The greatest is to listen to Sarah Michelle Gellar talk about how important her character is in the film... I think she saw a different movie or was lied to.

There is also a feature commentary with director Kevin Munroe, but if you are like me and have already heard about how they make animated films and don't really care about the history of the Turtles or how this story came about then you too are going to want to skip it.

If you have a young one at home and you are looking for a new reason to buy them some action figures then pick this DVD up and give it a spin once a day for the next couple of months. Either they will love it and you are screwed or they will hate it and you won't have to worry about them ever trying to engineer genetically mutated turtles.