Slow moves from mock turtles

Reviewed - TMNT:The hard-backed superheroes return in a routine action cartoon, writes Donald Clarke

YES, that's what it's called, I'm afraid. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a passably amusing comic, TV series, film, video game and lunchbox from the 1980s, has been initialised, digitised and repackaged for a new generation.

Not much else need be said. The digital animation is slightly below the state of the art, and the Turtles' New York looks a bit grubbier than the one tidied up by Rudolph Giuliani's moral scouring pad. But this is an unpretentious, routine super- hero adventure, featuring little

of the bombastic overkill of the 1990 live-action version.

As the film begins, Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo and Raphael are living separate lives. One of the gang is a children's entertainer. Another works in customer support for an IT firm. When terrible things begin happening in Manhattan, Shredder, the team's canine guru, gathers them back together and points them towards the danger. Fights and explosions follow.

Only a hopeless old twit would - remembering the British regulator's insistence that, first time round, the Ninjas be renamed "Heroes" - think it worth worrying about the comic violence in TMNT. Indeed, one might argue that, to an audience raised on Grand Theft Auto, the adventures of the new incarnation will seem a little anaemic.

Still, Mutant Turtle aficionados (and they are still about) should get along quite nicely with it. Those hitherto unmoved by the bellicose reptiles are, however, unlikely to be converted.