Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie

Cowabunga, dude! Is it already 25 years since the wisecracking, pizza scarfing, butt-kicking heroes in a half shell hit the pop culture radar as a comic book? New Line has collected all four feature films, including the Blu-ray debuts of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" (1990), "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze" (1991) and "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III" (1993). These live-action films, with characters created by Jim Henson's Creature Shop, are goofy, lighthearted lo-fi adventures with plenty of color and innocent attitude. "TMNT" (2007) is a computer-animated revival with little distinctive personality but a zippy sense of visual dynamics. Hardly essential action classics, but they are enjoyable slices of pop culture.

It is, however, an awfully skimpy set for a 25th anniversary collection, with no supplements on the first three films (sorry, but a theatrical trailer doesn't qualify as a "special feature") and the same "TMNT" extras from the previous Blu-ray release. And the packaging is not just poorly designed but downright cheap: a corrugated cardboard box with plastic trays holding discs on the top and bottom while a few goodies fill up the space between (postcard portraits, a mini-comic book reproduction of the debut comic and a black stocking cap). I think it's supposed to evoke a pizza box, but it just feels disposable.