3 New Clips From Nickelodeon's TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES & First Review

The thing about The Rise of the Turtles that impressed me most was the high standard of writing. The episodes are very funny. We get jokey dialogue, slapstick and humorous visual effects, and, for the most part, they really work.

The story moves at a good pace, allowing familiar characters to establish newly refined personalities without imposing on the action. The TMNT, in particular, are full, individual characters right away, which is something previous adaptations have struggled with. The new Michelangelo warrants special mention as the obvious highlight. This Mikey is silly, energetic and always enthused; he’s a proper cartoon character.

While the writing (and animation, which we’ll get to shortly) set Michelangelo up, voice actor Greg Cipes brings him to life perfectly. The character could easily have become annoying if overplayed, but Cipes finds just the right tone to make the character work. All four of the Turtles voice actors work well, with Jason Biggs proving to be an inspired choice as Leonardo. Amongst the supporting cast, I really liked what I heard of Mae Whitman as April O’Neil.

The only flaws I found with Rise of the Turtles were with the animation. As can often be the case with computer animation, the humans, for me, don’t look so good. April’s face, for example, looks really plastic and isn’t very expressive, and her father’s face lacks detail. Also, while mutant rat Splinter’s look is executed perfectly well, I’m not sure the design works.
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