Written/Created by: Matt
Originally posted on 12/04/02.

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This one certainly threw me for a loop. I knew enough to expect the unexpected when popping in a video featuring the live-action version of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles singing Christmas carols. I knew it would, on some superficial sight-and-sound level, serve as punishment on my soul for past sins. I knew I wouldn't be watching anything that should've won any awards. I knew all of this, and still, I called each and every one of my friends afterwards citing indisputable proof that purgatory exists and is easily accessible. Though fittingly festive, Christmas With The Turtles is reason enough to switch to a religion that doesn't celebrate Catholic holidays just so you could annihilate any chance of having to sit through it again. I will never, ever, not ever watch this video again. It's like I'm living in The Ring - I've got this tape I can't get rid of, yet have to remain alert at all times to save any who would unwittingly put it in the machine. You could hold a gun to my head, I still won't watch it. You could put my dick in one of those vices they screw on to the tables in middle school woodshop...I still won't watch it again.

On the plus side, it was a little better than Blade 2.

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There's no rhyme or reason to dictate how a video like this could ever come to be. Made in 1994, TMNT had just about exited it's reign on top of the animated mountain, instead relying on the hope that kids would remain into the green heroes if they forged a few bad costumes and turned the phenom into a live-action program. That experiment failed big time, since the budget didn't allow for the same quality costumes, production, and voice-work as they nailed for the first two big screen projects. This special, which seems to lie in the middle of TMNT's cartoon run and live-action run, couldn't have possibly been viewed by anyone as a good indication of a franchise holding on to it's popularity. There's a few reasons for this:

A) The costumes are terrible. The Turtles all look completely emaciated, with smiles permanently fixed on their faces. All of their costume ziplines and closures are so visible that you'd swear the director wanted kids to realize that there were real people inside.

B) The voice dubbing is absolutely ridiculous - worse than any Japanese monster movie by far. Donatello will say something while standing perfectly still, or start mouthing words when there's nothing to be heard. If that isn't bad enough, they've garnished the plate by making every Turtle have the most terrible stereotypical Brooklyn accent, to the point where the whole show seems more like a mid-90s SNL parody than a real, honest-to-goodness TMNT show.

C: Splinter. If memory serves, Splinter was the Turtles' mentor - a jumbo-sized humanoid rat. In Christmas With The Turtles, Splinter looks like monkey who was ran over by a car a few dozen times, fitted with several gasoline-soaked rags that could possibly, on a stretch, be construed as 'clothes.'

Of course, compared to what actually goes on in the special, all that stuff is just nicking pits. I love Christmas and I love the Turtles, but I'd lose any journalistic integrity I have left if I used anything but obscenities and synonyms for 'feces' to describe what I've seen. Sorry if you think I'm taking all this a little too hard. I always get so irritable when people make Leonardo sound like Chachi.


After trimming their Christmas tree, the Turtles realize that they forgot to buy Splinter a present. Today is Christmas Eve...all the stores are closing! They only have a few short hours to find and wrap a gift for the damn rat. The Turtles get into this immense heated argument over who was supposed to buy Splinter's gift; you would've thought this was a serious fight if their lame costumes didn't force those asinine perpetual smiles on 'em. For a bunch of naked social outcasts who live in the sewer with an ultra-strict ratty father figure, these guys are pretty happy. Praise the Christmas spirit.


Now, this special isn't really a themed episode of the show so much as a musical celebration of the holiday season. They'll be a minute of conversation and action for every ten minutes of HOLY MOTHER OF GOD AWFUL Christmas carols. No, no, you really don't understand. The songs are *really* bad. Peel the paint off the walls kinda bad. Need proof? The first line of the first of many bad songs: "Deck the halls with pep-per-roni." Not enough for you? The following line, mysteriously spoken in a Spanish accent by Leo: "No Bebop and no Rock-stea-dy.' And these, honestly, are some of the better examples. Trust me, seeing it in print is nothing compared to the real thing, with the words nowhere near matching the Turtles' lip movements, and the strange neon-trimmed jump cuts coming at a rate of thirty-six per second.

I tried putting myself into a younger perspective mode for a brief moment. Would I have enjoyed this special ten years ago, when I was still a boy who loved his Leo? Nope. If I had seen this as a kid, I'm pretty sure I would've started wearing black clothes exclusively and gone on a baby-murder hunt during the night. I'm not saying that everyone who watches this will start killing babies, but I'm certain that most who saw it at least put their head through a plate glass window. Masking the emotional trauma with surface pain, you know how it goes.


In Christmas With The Turtles, some of the usual rules don't apply. They're allowed to walk the city streets without fear or disguise, and they're allowed to do this in the middle of Times Square, which looks suspiciously devoid of life considering it's Christmas Eve. The begin decorating a tree, which inspires Mikey to do something so unsettling that I'm still not sure I'm not really in Hell right now: sing opera.


Seriously, he's singing opera. No, not a cutesy Turtlelized version of opera. REAL opera, with a real opera voice that isn't even consistent with the wrong voice they used for Mikey in the rest of the same damn special. It's at this point that I realized the awful truth about what we have here. This 'special' was obviously made for the last fast buck from a dying fad, penned and filmed in approximately 112 minutes total. Now that's nothing new - these companies aren't in the business to bring smiles to kids' faces, unless those smiles are accompanied by a wad of their parents' money. But they could've at least tried. Aside from the untapped niche of masochistic comedy, they failed on every level with this one. The people who put it together obviously didn't know Raphael from Rude Dog, relying on the two ideas that 'Turtles like pizza' and 'Turtles like to party' to create the show.

There's zero separation between the characters - they all have the same voice, and all they talk about are pizza or skateboards. The only thing that differentiates the Turtles are their trademark eye masks, but they even managed to fuck that up. Frequently, you'll find Donatello in a red mask, or Leo in an orange one. I know I shouldn't care this much, but god dammit, the nice old lady who sold the video to me charged EIGHT BUCKS for shipping and handling. I can deal with a really uninspired TMNT show, but not when I'm paying eight bucks for the cassette to spread cancer all over my mailbox.

There's days when I think God loves me, and then there's days when I think he remembers the time I doodled him wearing sunglasses and a Umbro thong all too well. Today is one of the latter days. Latter day saints? I hate Christmas.


By the way, he's still not done with the opera song. This special runs for around 25 minutes. The opera song runs for eight of them. If you count this and the 'Deck The Halls with Pepperoni' song, half the audio track on this tape could be used in hospitals to get people to throw up medicines they weren't supposed to swallow.


They finally end up in a store to buy Splinter's present, and the Turtles can't seem to agree on what to get him. Some suggest comic books, others suggest video games. Raphael suggests giving him 'five yo-yos.' I suggest they stop talking nonsense before I slap a George Bush mask atop my VCR, set it on fire, and pretend the whole thing's one big political effigy just so I get some press mileage out of the burned electronics. I know I'm not making much sense today, but as you can clearly see, it's really not my fault.

So you might be wondering - what do you buy a mutant rat for Christmas? I mean, it's not like you can waltz into Macy's and browse their clearance baskets for winter hats or peacoats. And since he was once human, giving Splinter a stack of cheese would only insult his pride. I'd just break all the mirrors in the sewer and tell Splinter that he just got his Christmas present. The Turtles believe in a more traditional route, so the search continues. What'd they end up buying Splinter? Oh jesus...


A fucking plastic pizza in a wood frame. You know, say what you will about Splinter, but he cared for and nurtured these guys since birth. He was there for them before they had even mutated. He taught them to speak, taught them how to use nunchucks - he damn near taught them everything they know. Maybe Donatello learned how to construct and fly that stupid blimp by himself, but that's about it. Splinter did it all. And this is the thanks he gets? A plastic pizza for Christmas? Dude can't even eat it!

Poor Splinter. Poor me. Poor Tokka.


More hilarity - while fitting Splinter's plastic pizza into a gift box, the Turtles sing the 'Wrap Rap' song. It's mostly an excuse for them to twirl the camera around so fast that they won't need to bother matching the voice with the Turtles' lip movements. Not that they cared for the other 22 minutes.

I think there was some potential in a live-action show, but they totally blew it. The live-action episodes were shown on Fox for a few weeks, but they got increasingly terrible to the point where little kids actually made their teacher explain to them what 'boycott' meant so they'd know how to make Fox take it off the air. The costumes weren't as awful in that show as they are here, but they still made a few big mistakes. Stealing Chun-Li from Street Fighter and sticking bubbly green skin all over her was one of them. Making the Turtles fight a gorilla mobster was right up there, too. Still, time heals wounds. TMNT is quickly seeing it's popularity surge these days, and we're not far off from new attempts at television shows and movies. Let's just hope they don't fuck it up again.


It's Christmas! Splinter accepts the Turtles' gift with about as much grace as he can muster. Following scenes show Leonardo attempting to eat the plastic pizza. Indian giver. The rat thanks his students and showers them with compliments for their giving spirit and thoughtfulness. For a second, I thought they were going to end on a moderately high note. Then Splinter goes and screws everything up by saying this:

"My sons! Children, please gather around. Let's rock and roll!"

With that, it's an assault on all things holy as Splinter sings his version of The Twelve Days of Christmas, a song that seems to last longer than Mandela's stint in prison. (Five video games, four silk kimonos, three neckties, two comic books, and a pizza with pepperoni - I HATE THEM ALL) He goes through the whole song too, and by the time he's done, even the Turtles are annoyed with him. And guess what? Even when they're vocal about being annoyed, they're still smiling. What is this tape...where did it come from? Oh well. No sense trying to explain the unexplainable, so let's make fun of what Splinter looks like instead.


Take a look at Splinter. Or, if you're an Italian who doesn't trim, look at your pubic hair. It's the same thing.


They close the show by singing away with a group of kids who suddenly appeared in the sewer for no apparent reason. Does anyone have some Ibuprofen?

Overall: As much as I've railed on this, Christmas With The Turtles is indeed pretty funny. Not intentionally funny, but a laugh's a laugh. At least it wasn't boring. I've purchased some other holiday specials with the intent to review here, but thus far, a lot of them are just way too uninteresting to write about. Gumby's Christmas Special didn't make me cry, but it didn't keep me awake too long either. I didn't fall asleep on this one, so it's got that going for it. I'm really hurting my brain trying to think of some other positive thing to say here. Hmmm. Well, they remembered that turtles are supposed to be green. Isn't that worth a few points?

Final Analysis: Needs more Krang.





 


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