Review:300 & Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

It may strike you as odd that I have decided to run two such radically different films into one review. The fact is, though, that they have a surprising amount in common. Okay, the former is based upon an incident from history and the latter on a marketing ploy, but both draw on graphic novels as their main source of inspiration and both deal strongly with issues of honour, courage, responsibility and comradeship. Despite one featuring live actors and one being entirely animated 300 is so heavily dominated by CGI that it might as well be entirely animated.

It plays so fast and loose with history and reality that it drifts into the purely fantastic realms on TMNT. The portrayal of the (self-proclaimed) god-king, Xerxes as an 8 foot tall lipstick-wearing gulch-monkey may be meant as a subtle motivation for the character; i.e., he had to conquer the world to make the rest of the planet accept him & make him feel loved, or I might just be reading a smidgeon too much into it. It has a few extra scenes inserted to expand it to full feature length because, let's face it, the story was a bit light on detail even before it got hacked back for the constraints of the narrative-lite preferences of the graphic novel fan. Mostly, these deal with a rather odd political set-up which sees the king of the Spartans undermined by politicians. This, alongside the final speeches about fighting for the 'restoration' of democracy and 'freedom' give the film a distinctly pro-war, and support-America-in-Iraq tone which must go a long way to explaining its popularity in the US.

It's entertaining enough, but it didn't need the addition of orc-like characters and freaks.It's also hard to give a damn about anyone in the film. They're all cyphers rather than rounded characters and why should we care about a king who starts a war against both overwhelming odds and the wishes of his people, who is further offered more than he could ever gain by allying with his foe and who still refuses to yield to reason?

Despite it's target juvenile audience and its far more frivolous tone, TMNT actually draws some deeper characters, whom it is possible to like. Alright, we're not talking any real depth, here and the script is far from literature. Indeed it seems to be little more than the typical Hollywood hackery I usually despise, but it's entertaining, light-hearted fun. It has a clearer and somehow deeper and more resonant morality to it and this should not be. Where 300 seems to be in a rush to get to the next fight and the next rock video-style slow-motion, blood-spattering, homo-erotic pec-fest TMNT actually has decent pace and development.

And there's a sentence I never thought I'd say!

The real reason these films are combined in one review, though is because I draw the same conclusion about each:

Perfectly pitched at its target audience, with enough to keep the rest of us entertained and engaged. Once one accepts this film for what it is - an animated roller-coaster ride - a more than happy couple of hours can be passed in the cinema with one's brain deactivated.

TMNT wins by a length, though and - again I can't believe I'm saying this - the one to choose.