The Miami Herald from Miami, Florida • 155

jjjMilpm WEEKEND Turtles disappoints dad delights son Movie displays decidedly dark side rDUELtNaCRITICSflni Andrew John i By JOHN DORSCHNER Herald Staff Writer face it: Honorable men can come to different conclusions Andrew my 4 Vfe-year-old son loved Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles I was disappointed Which kind of surprised me I entered the theater prepared to be at least pleasantly amused The Heroes in the Half-Shell are wisecracking pizza-devouring party dudes Any group I figure led by a Zen-thinking sewer rat be all bad A kind of religion Andrew watches the cartoon TV version daily with the kind of devotion that adults generally reserve for religion or baseball He knows every detail about how four turtles were accidentally exposed to radioactive gunk which transformed them into 150-pound English-speaking dudes who live in a sewer with their ninja master Splinter a rat exposed to the same gunk Andrew believes this story so fervently that once when I suggested we go to a lake to see real turtles he said Dad turtles live in sewers This show has such an immense following of 3- to 9-year-olds that the producers easily could have devised a straight-ahead no-frills profitable movie But they obviously were greedy They imagined Batman They thought cross over They gave the film a dark patina: filthy New York streets graffiti-strewn walls with enough violence to garner a PG rating They obviously wanted to give critics a chance to use the word noir and earn themselves Batman -sized profits BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS: Ninja turtle Donatello loves pizza but hold the anchovies please To this wretched excess they added another welding on a Star Wars plot with a Darth Vader look-alike battling a wise old rat who believes in power of the The result: The calculated money-grubbing motives are so obvious it overwhelms the delightful turtles One for the green guys Andrew I must confess did not mention overwrought noir among his comments He was enthralled from start to finish clapping wildly when the evil Shredder met his demise His conclusion: was In several scenes I worried the movie was about to get too terrifying for a young child such as when the lovely April was mugged but the director never quite went over the edge The viewer sees the start of the vicious karate kick to the head but then the camera shifts to i I I i I the body collapsing on the floor The violence is incessant but not graphic Andrew found the movie an eensy-teensy bit of enough to keep him fascinated And he at all bothered by the switch from the TV cartoon format to the costumed actors The turtle garb developed by Jim Creative Workshop works well He liked the movie better than the TV show he said Why? I asked he replied MOVIE REVIEW TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES (PG) Cast: Judith Hoag Elias Koteas Director: Steve Barron Producers: Kim Dawson Simon Fields David Chan Screenwriters: Todd Langenand Bobby Herbeck Music: John du Prez A New Line Cinema release Running time 87 minutes Contains violence May be too intense for children under 4 DE Patrick Dempsey above stars as the youngest of three brothers on a cross-country trip from Detroit to Miami See Juan Carlos review on 13G One-joke Nuns runs out of gas quickly MOVIE REVIEW NUNS ON THE RUN (PG-13) Vz Cast: Eric Idle Robbie Coltrane Camille Coduri Janet Suzman Doris Hare Lila Kaye Director: Jonathan Lynn Producer: Michael White Screenwriter: Jonathan Lynn Cinematographer: Michael Garfath A Handmade Films release Running time 92 minutes Vulgar language nudity FRIDAY MARCH 30 1990 THE MIAMI HERALD cynicism as he tweaks the cheeks of the Catholic church and he is aided in his efforts by the straight-faced Coltrane who spits out religious dogma with the earnestness the PR panache of New Cardinal John Even the breast and bathroom jokes here and there are plenty seem harmless The only true show of dash and class though belongs not to a man disguised as a nun but to a comedienne disguised as a mother superior Janet dry acerbic-as-Gore-Vidal convent head is a rich and thoroughly winning performance a bit of genius in an otherwise stale though sometimes amusing production their moments of giddy grandeur as two bank robbers on the lam from their double-crossing boss who hides out in a convent Disguised as Sister Euphemia of the Five Wounds and Sister Inviolata of the Immaculate Conception they look like a riot Uglier nuns you will not see But left once you get past the ridiculousness of their situation Coltrane playing basketball (habit a or the two chaperoning (eyes a their stacked showering pupils? The crime-tinged subplot is essentially bare bones the barrage of batty British one-liners a lackluster hash Although lacking in originality and verve the comedy does to its credit have a simple good-natured spirit Lynn wisely sidesteps malice and By RYAN MURPHY Herald Staff Writer Nuns on the Run has what is perhaps the funniest movie title If only subject matter were as witty Hanging an entire film on the premise of cross-dressing is dangerous: With only one joke to play with tough to succeed Blake charming 1982 hit Victor Victoria is one exception That film was a sweet-and-sour look at gender a delicious stew of sight-gags and genuine insight Nuns on the Run lacks the punch the sincerity of classic Its directorwriter cheap-gag-obsessive Jonathan Lynn is no Blake Edwards And its stars Monty Eric Idle and comic Robbie AT Anne Archer above plays the vamp in Alan Rudolph's tale of a loopy love affair See Bill Cosford's review on 11G Coltrane lack the charm (not to mention the gams) of Julie Andrews not that they try hard Idle with the bug-eyed brio and frizzy red hair of Gene Wilder and the tubby Coltrane a fitting Dom DeLuise-like second banana have ut Oi.