Director: Michael Pressman
Cast: Paige Turco, David Warner, Ernie Reyes, Jr., Toshishiro Obata
Have I Seen it Before: Almost as many times as the original.
Did I Like It: The first film was a huge success, and as often happens, a sequel was rushed into production. The film doesn’t work nearly as well as its predecessor, and ultimately doesn’t have to. It has a very short grocery list of things it needs to accomplish. Turtles arrive. They fight.
Now, some have noted that the violence of those fights is significantly turned down, even going so far as not having the various turtles use their trademark weapons in combat. In an early scene Michelangelo improvises a line of sausage links in lieu of his normal nunchaku. Honestly? The change in combat doesn’t even occur to me when I am watching the film, and I’m only reminded of it when reading about the film after the fact.
One could pick at the thing that happen in the film. Why does the ooze not only cause Shredder to grow, but also change the sharpness, number, and configuration of his blades? Who thought Ernie Reyes Jr.—an accomplished and capable stuntman—needed to try regular acting this time around? Why is the titular “secret of the ooze” actually what the casual viewer would have suspected all along (that it is just improperly disposed of nuclear waste)? Why is Vanilla Ice playing a club near the wharf, or for that matter, why is Vanilla Ice even in this movie in the first place?
One could pontificate on all of those issues and more, but what would be the point? Should we damn a kids movie for not reaching for more than its basest trappings? Even then, there are moments where this film reaches for more than the sum of its parts. Casting David Warner alone classes up the proceedings quite a bit. There’s also that line where Michelangelo reminds himself to drop a line to Ralph Nader. That’s not a line that six-year olds at the time will get. For that matter, here in 2020 it inspired a fifteen minute conversation about Nader’s career as a consumer advocate before he made a name spoiling (yes, you read that right, didn’t think this review was going to be a reignition of twenty-year-old political debates, did you?) elections.
I’ve seen plenty of films purporting to be for grown-ups that don’t inspire that kind of discourse. Just goes to show you that even films like this can hold some surprises.
If only they had kept it up.