TURTLES FOREVER - A Love Letter to Turtlemaniacs (airs on CW 4Kids for Three Weeks)
Terrence Briggs
Last Saturday featured the world premiere of the made-for-TV animated
feature, Turtles Forever. In short, the 4Kids Turtles meet their 1988
TV versions, and wackiness ensues.
Think of this as the Shrek of TMNT 's animated universes. The
original character models for the 1980s TV series are slipped right
alongside the current ones (too bad they didn't get the original voice
actors).
Loving tributes and jabs abound, as do cheap shots (the old characters
are often treated as juvenile, superficial, and cowardly caricatures
of themselves). Strangely enough, the current turtles are never
treated as humorless, mistuned wannabe badasses; that jab is targeted
toward the original black-and-white Turtles, who play a role in this
story, too.
Lloyd Goldfine directed and co-wrote this 60-minute episode, which
almost makes up for Back to the Swers. The tone of this nutty episode
is very much in the spirit of TMNT: Fast Forward, with fouth-wall
breaks to add even more postmodern juice to a story that definitely
needed it. I *wish* the Star Trek revamp was this much fun.
Anyone who ever loved the old TMNT animated series owes themselves an
appointment for the Turtles Forever rerun. I can safely say that
you'll laugh AT LEAST as hard as I did, and I'm a TMNT2003 hater.
Terrence Briggs, literally stumbled across this while playing through
last week's time shifts.
Peace to you...