TMNT

"What is it with ninjas and smoke pellets?" The remarkably resilient, martial arts-trained, pizza-scarfing, wisecracking sewer turtles are back for their first big-screen outing in more than a decade with this fast-paced, smart-alecky computer-animated feature from Kevin Munroe. The story –- something to do with an ancient evil returning after 3,000 years and a turtle family squabble that will inevitably be healed by brotherly love and crack teamwork -– plays like a multiepisode arc on the old animated series, with little distinctive personality but a zippy sense of visual dynamics. The turtles leap and flip and do their kung-fu fighting like circus acrobats on a half-shell, and the camera swoops and sweeps through the action with joyous abandon. Don't worry if you can't keep the green team members straight; despite color coding and weapons specialties, the personalities are perfunctory beyond the basics: Leonardo the eldest (James Arnold Taylor), Raphael the hot-tempered rebel (Nolan North), Michelangelo the fun-loving one (Mikey Kelley), and Donatello the techno-wizard (Mitchell Whitfield). Most adults need a program (or an adolescent fan) to tell them apart. Mako voices their sensei, Master Splinter; Chris Evans and Sarah Michelle Gellar are human co-stars Casey Jones and April O'Neil; Patrick Stewart and Ziyi Zhang are their nemeses; and Laurence Fishburne narrates.

The commentary by writer/director Munroe may make for an interesting production history for Turtles fans and animation buffs, but no one else need apply. Animated films rarely have actual deleted scenes, as most changes are made long before completion, so the alternate and deleted scenes collected here are in rough stages at best. The alternate opening is shown in its original storyboard incarnation, the alternate ending a "temp scratch test," and the extended "Mikey Birthday Party" and "Splinter Birthday Cake" scenes are largely finished. All of them feature unremovable commentary by Munroe. Also features a side-by-side comparison of storyboards to finished animation for one scene, storyboards of a deleted scene, an early animation test, and a five-minute promotional featurette with voice actor interviews among its bite-sized supplements. Also available in HD DVD and Blu-ray formats.