This is a really weird one to analyze. Mostly inspired by the darker, moodier tone of Eastman & Laird’s original comic books, the turtles’ feature film debut also injects many of the sillier, mainstream-friendly elements of the Saturday morning cartoon show. The two extremes don’t exactly meet in the middle, giving us strange juxtapositions like Michaelangelo cracking wise in a big fight scene while Raphael lies, bloodied and unconscious, a few feet away. Written for an audience that won’t ask many questions, it plays fast and loose with its plot points, like so many other spectacle-driven films of its era. Nothing holds up to scrutiny, even if we’re willing to give a pass to the five-foot reptiles’ well-traveled origin story.

Seeing this in the theater, eleven-year-old me was disappointed by the sluggish second act, unnecessary romantic subplots and shadowy textures. Watching it as an adult, with twin eleven-year-olds of my own, I constantly rolled my eyes at the terrible jokes and smoke-and-mirrors fight scenes. A conservative estimate would put my groan average at twice per scene. It gets points for the surprisingly well-aged creature effects (well done, Jim Henson) and for trying to stay close to the spirit of the source material, but it’s awfully tough to look past the weak production values, cheesy action cut-aways and ham-tastic dialogue. My goodness, there’s a lot of bad dialogue.