Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of Ooze

One day during the summer I went to my local Blockbuster with my good friend Basha to rent what I learned to be the greatest film of 2002, “Bowling for Columbine”. So while we were there, we figured since we were probably going to be up for most of the night, we might as well also rent one of those types of movies that’s only funny when you’re really tired (ex: Airplane! II, but not the original Airplane!, which is funny even when it’s not playing and it’s just an inanimate video cassette lying on top of your VCR). So when we were paying for the tapes, I got a free card which entitled me to a free $.99 kids video everyday until the end of August. Basha and I planned on renting one everyday until our hearts exploded and fluffy rabbits and pretty rainbows poured out of them, but unfortunately I lost it on day 3. Actually, I don’t think I lost it, I think my Dad threw it out because he’s an acute homophobe and he doesn’t like me renting Power Rangers video (because he knows how sexually attractive the Green Ranger can be). So here’s Day 1 of our descent into kiddie madness with a review of “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of Ooze”.

Oh, and we also planned on making a sanity meter to see how many brain cells would be replaces with pretty flowers by September. So just assume that my sanity started at 100%, though we all know that it’s an even 40%.

Alright, so with a name like this, I’m expecting a fair amount of ooze. Not too much, I don’t want to be greedy. So it starts off with a big line for some corner pizzaria, which I can only assume that it’s really a secret drug ring or the pizza has Soylent Green in it. So this pizza boy is delivering pizza when he sees a group of robbers stealing computers or something. He’s Asian, and if I know anything about stereotypes, he plans on kung fu’ing the place to death. And he does. Well, until they start kicking his ass. So the turtles come in and rock out with wussy rock music in the background, when Raphael starts jumping on a guy and yelling “You want a pickle!? You got a pickle!!!” I don’t know what it means, but if your sexual innuendo alarm didn’t go off, then you’ve never heard of a penis or a vagina.

Title scrolls and you hear some crazy gnarly lingo that was no longer hip by the time this sequel came out. Now this is the hardest part of my job… telling you all that around this point, I fell asleep. Not even fifteen minutes into the movie, probably right after the pickle line, I just passed out. I’m assuming the same with Basha. I wake up, and I have no fucking idea what’s going on. Foot Soldiers come in (remember those purple guys?), which makes me realize that not only are we pretty deep in the movie, but that I can’t even follow a plot made for children about fucking turtles who happen to be ninjas.

Alright, so something happened… foot soldiers escaped by throwing some evil smoke or gas at the turtles… they cough for about twenty minutes… actually it’s more like ten seconds, but if you count up to ten it really is a long time to be coughing. So the turtles have to go back in the sewers, or sneak around town or some shit, so to be in disguise they put on a coat and a 1950’s hat. Listen, no hat, no matter how big or 1950’s-like, can disguise the fact that you’re a fat green turtle that’s carrying around a sword. At this point my interest was dropping, and I was contemplating making myself a grilled cheese sandwich, but then I saw on the Blockbuster Video box that it said that early 90’s ghetto thug Vanilla Ice was in the movie. He could be either Bebop or Rocksteady (the rhino and the piglikething), so I put the grilled cheese sandwich on indefinite hold.

Meanwhile, in Shredder’s secret lair (Shredder being the ultimo bad guy), he uses the ooze that you heard so much about in the title of the movie to mutate a puppy and a snapping turtle into a bigger puppy and snapping turtle. They dub him their mother, thus teaching Shredder how to LOVE. So the turtles go to save one of the turtles who was captured or something, BUT OMG IT’S A TRAP!!1!1 LOL!!!1! I also notice, only now, at the 40 minute mark, that the Asian pizza delivery boy has a mullet. Back to the trap. Yeah, the trap, anyway, a huge cotton net falls on the adolescent mutant ninja turtles, with no way to get out. I am confirmed when they spout bodacious lines like “WOAH DUDE, THERE’S NO WAS TO GET OUT OF THIS GNARLY NET! WHAT A TOTAL BUMMER!” Then I start yelling at the TV because they’re all carrying FUCKING SWORDS! JUST FUCKING SLICE THE NET YOU FUCKING IDIOTS! Michaelangelo aside, because he has numchucks, and that can’t cut cotton, at least now very well. Something happens, then suddenly the turtles are out of the net. Probably some mystical magical power t hat they used, because I doubt they used their swords for that would’ve been too easy and logical. I realize that I haven’t seen Vanilla Ice yet. He might’ve been that evil cameraman that I saw earlier on… I don’t know because I’m definitely not going to rewind to check…

Forget what happens… forget what happens… We’re at a Vanilla Ice concert. Oh, so I was wrong. At least I don’t have to rewind now. Anyway, there’s like, at the most, 50 people in the crowd, which makes me think this is a Junior High school dance or something. They don’t even seem to be paying attention to V-Ice, they seem to be more interested in the back-up dancers. That would make sense because of all the gnarly early-90’s dance moves they used to do. I miss those days. The turtles run into the club, probably because they don’t want to be seen and they figured that there would be the least amount of people at a Vanilla Ice concert. V-Ice-Man proceeds to freestyle about the ninja turtles.

“Yo! It’s the green machine! / Gonna rock tha house without being seen!”

Footsoldiers invade the club to kick some ass, and people just stop looking at Vanilla Ice altogether. Vanilla Ice just gave up at that point. Good for him. Then bad-ass Shredder walks in, totally bad-ass and all, and unveils the ooze. People gasp as if they know what the fuck is going on. Listen, I’ve been watching this movie for the last 80 minutes and I don’t even know what the fuck if going on. All you people saw was a green liquid in a graduated cylinder, and you scream like it’s the fucking end of the world. The turtles, however, know better as they attach a keyboard to an ampliphier, pull a Spinal Tap and turn the knob to 11, and wail on the keyboard, thus blowing Shredder away. No, literally blowing Shredder away.

On a side note, I used to know how to play “Mary Had a Little Lamb” on my keyboard. I just thought you should all know that.

They should’ve jacked that amp to 12, or possibly 13, because Shredder wasn’t blown away hard enough, as he landed on a balcony where he TOOK THE OOZE HIMSELF! Shredder then transformed into Super Shredder, as played by Kevin Nash. Kevin Nash then took a couple of steps, tripped, fell, and tore a muscle.

Kidding. There’s the obligatory Kevin Nash joke of the day. Super Shredder was actually played by Kevin Nash, though.

So the turtles, somehow, beat Shredder, and all’s well in the sewers again. They meet up with Splinter, their rat martial-arts trainer, and he shows them that day’s issue of their local newspaper. He also says ‘oi’. I had no idea he was Jewish, especially since I was almost positive he was Buddhist. Anyway, the newspaper’s headline was something along the lines of “VANILLA ICE RAPS ABOUT TURTLES”. It’s only safe to assume that under that was “NO NEWS TODAY. SECTIONS A THROUGH E ARE ALL BLANK PAGES.”

Sanity rating: 92%, mostly due to early 90’s hip-hop.

Rating: Three out of five stars.

- Rob Quinones