Go Ninja Go Ninja Go

They're really making a new, CG-animated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (or TMNT, to those of us in the know) movie? Really?

Who is the imagined audience for this spectacle? People around my age, who grew up with the Ninja Turtles? Because, yes, like most nerdy males my age, I used to like the Ninja Turtles. I saw the first two films in theaters and even had one of the horrible Nintendo games, which consisted (if memory serves) almost entirely of driving around in a van and climbing in and out of sewers.

But surely an animated Ninja Turtles film can't be aiming for mainly 30 year old former fans. They must want to convert a younger generation, that can discover for themselves the joys of four juvenile humanoid turtles performing bad martial arts choreography in between bites of pizza and lame slang held over from Valley Girl.

Maybe I'm crazy. Maybe nostalgia alone will catapult this film to massive success. It's possible, I guess. I'm certainly curious about what an animated, harder-edged adaptation of the Ninja Turtle comic book would look like. But am I curious enough to actually shell out (har!) money to see a new Ninja Turtle movie? Probably not.

So, it seems that the long talked about CG NINJA TURTLES flick has nailed a pair of distributors. Warner Bros has it overseas and The Weinsteins are releasing it domestically, with a release date of March 30, 2007.

I think I'd be a bit embarrassed sitting in a theater, waiting to watch a film about ninja turtles. That sinking feeling of being a near-30-year old loser with nothing better to do than watch cartoon reptiles fighting inconsequential skirmishes against a tinfoil-clad weirdo named Shredder. I'll probably wait for DVD just to sidestep that rather unpleasant, introspective moment of shame.

Oddly, I wouldn't get that same pang of anxiety and self-consciousness waiting to see, say, a double-feature of trashy 70's exploitation films in a scummy hole in Hollywood. I cannot explain this blatant double-standard, and for that I apologize.

I'd also like to add that, if they were going to get Corey Feldman to return as the voice of Donatello, that would be an entirely different story.

[NINJA TURTLE TRIVIA OF THE DAY: Kevin Clash, the actor who voiced Splinter the Rat in the old Ninja Turtle films of the 90's now does the voice of Elmo for "Sesame Street." It's true!]