ANI-MOVIES: *TMNT

Imagi Entertainment's first full-length CGI animated movie before the recent Astro Boy film was this sequal to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles live-action movie trilogy from the 90s. Despite what alot of people thought, the Nostalgia Critic included, this was not a followup to the 80s animated series, the 2000s animated series, or the abomination known as The Next Mutation.

Taking place a few years after the third movie, the Turtles have gone estranged. Leonardo left to go on a training mission to Central America. April O'Neil is now into trading relics, and while in Central America tracks down Leo, and lets him know how the other brothers are doing. Donatello and Michaelangelo each have secret part-time jobs to make ends meet. Raphael is doubling as a masked vigilante called Nightwatcher. Leo decides to finally return to New York. While this is going on, the Foot Clan is being lead Karai in the wake of Shredder's apparent death who are now working for the rich CEO, Max Winters. Winters is really an immortal ex-warrior king who three thousand years ago opened a door to another dimension that unleashed thirteen monsters into our world. Winters is now trying to collect the monsters who are converging on New York, supposedly because the portal is going to reopen, although it threatens to release an endless army of monsters too. To help him, Winters collects the statue-fied remains of his former war buddies, and brings them to life as living stone. After getting involved in a fight with the Foot's attempt to capture one of the monsters, Leo grows tired of Raphael's stubbornness to listen to his orders. He later finds out about Raphael's superheroing, and they have it out in a fight that's been building for a long time now(ask anyone whose read the original comics!). Leo gets captured by the Winters' stoneboys who want to fake him out as the last of the monsters so that they can keep their immortality. Raph gets Splinter, April, Casey Jones, and the other Turtles to raid Winters' tower while they are opening the vortex. The stone soldiers betray Winters as the Turtles and the Foot team up to stop them. They conveniently manage to find the last monster and send it into the vortex with the others. The Foot leaves promising a possible sequal, and Winters then disappears into pixie dust, while the Turtles decide to continue their crimefighting careers.

This was a good upgrade from the live-action movies, and most of the other adaptions of the comic, but it still carried the storyline from the original movies pretty well. The animation is most impressive, and the backgrounds and character designs are very articulate. I thought the movie was a great extension of the Turtles mythos, even though it might be a little unappealing to non-shellheads.