Oh boy well i've finally done it i've found what I think is the worst if not one of the worst products that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have starred in and this is one of if not the worst Christmas special ever made. I've been putting of watching this special for years now and quite frankly I wish that i'd put it off some more because yeah this special is just as bad as everyone says it is and so join me as I review "We Wish You A Turtle Christmas" enjoy.
The plot for this special is that the turtles have forgotten to buy a Christmas present for Splinter and so have to go shopping for his Christmas Present on Christmas Eve. The plot is the first thing that's wrong with the special because when I think of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles I think of a fun heart pounding story the plot for this special however is just an excuse to get from poorly done song to the next and nothing more but I will say that they do a somewhat solid job of telling this story just not that much of a good job in my opinion.
Starring in this terribly freaking special is Eric Anzalone )who is credited in the special as James Eric Anzalone) Raphael and Alfredo Miller as Michaelangelo. Also starring in this freaking terrible special is Florence Reymond as Donatello , Ronn K. Smith as Leonardo and Jack William Scott as Splinter. This isn't a case of me cutting the cast list down as I normally would these four actors are the only actors in the whole special and yes they do have a bunch of kids but since the kids don't say anything in the special it wouldn't be right to include them in this cast list.
How do I put this nicely the acting in this special is so bad that it makes the acting in the Michael Bay produced Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles seem OSCAR worthy by comparison. To be fair the actors playing the turtles aren't really allowed to much with their characters since the script is so bad that it distills the characters to one personality trait and that just isn't enough for the actors to turn in anything more then a good performance.
In the nineties for some reason the turtles where everywhere appearing not only in theatrically released live action movies but of course there animated show , comic book and video games. However they also appeared in quite alot of weird things as well like the Coming of Of Their Shells Tour and the Getting Down In Your Town Tour as well as a video designed to teach kids about alternate transportation methods and and a video designed to introduce children to the concept and importance of caretaking of the America's or whatever country you live in's natural resources and heritage sites.
Yeah bottom line the turtles where everywhere with all of their strange media appearances diminishing the brand name even more. I get that the turtles where popular as hell back in the nineties but that doesn't mean that they have to be on the front of every product or video and what's alot of these other media appearances even more strange is that for a few of them at least they got the voices from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1987 animated series to reprise their roles.
I cannot find the words to describe to you how bad the turtles look in this film but I honestly feel that these turtle suits are what Freddy Krueger was having a nightmare about in the Dream Warriors music video which for those that don't know the song dream warriors was performed by the band Dokken. Since yeah they look freaking terrible and very cheaply made hell in alot of the shots in this special you can actually see where the head for the suit ends and alot of the time the mouth don't freaking work properly.
Usually you can very easily tell who Leonardo is and who Donatello is but for some reason in this special the purple that thy have for Donatello's headband comes out blue in some shots. As such you can't really tell them apart which is a really big issue considering you have to spend an entire special with them and so you don't want to spending half the specials running time wondering who is Leonardo and who is Donatello.
Thankfully this special isn't that long since it only has a total running time of twenty one minuets and forty three seconds. However even tho this is the a solid running time for any Christmas special for this special it's a bit to long of a running time since the whole plot of them trying to get a gift for Splinter is done with by the fifteen minuet mark and that's with all the songs that they shoehorn in to this special as such i do feel that this special should have been alot shorter like ten or fifteen minuets at the most since there's not alot of plot to cover twenty one minuets and forty three seconds.
Believe it or not this is a musical because when you think of Teenage Age Mutant Ninja Turtles you totally think of musicals not action or comedy it's the musical numbers that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise is known for. The songs for this special are written by the this special's writer Tish Rabe as well as the composer for this special Richard Berg and honestly all of the songs are bad there's not one good song just so you know there's eight songs in this special and not one of them are good it takes talent to make a special full of bad songs and all the songs are remakes over copyright free Christmas songs but given that this budget had a budget of i'm not kidding $5,000 American dollars I can't blame them for going with songs that you can use for free.
Overall do i really need to say how bad this special is because it's so freaking bad usually i'd say don't believe what other people are saying and form your opinion but in this case I have to say believe what everyone who has seen this special has said because it's that bad. Even the very few redeeming qualities are only good when you compare them to literally anything else in the special as such this special gets a 1 out of 10 from me.
All of the images that I used for this review were gathered from Google Images and while I did look at the official Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fandom wiki page for images I decided to get all the images from Google Images. This was because even tho this special doesn't deserve high quality images all of the images of the special on the official Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fandom wiki page just weren't high definition where as the the ones on Google Images were high definition and yes I will cover the other more bizarre pieces of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles media if you guys really freaking want me to.