User Reviews

If you thought the third Ninja Turtles movie was bad, and their Coming Out of Their Shells tour was bad even worse, then gather around, dudes and dudettes, for I have the cream of crap crop: We Wish You a Turtle Christmas. Yep, have you ever wondered how the Ninja Turtles celebrate Christmas? I used to wonder that myself, and when I saw this video, it was nothing like I had pictured. It's really bad! At first we see the turtles, Michaelangelo, Donatello, Leonardo and Raphael, looking worse than they've ever looked before...wait til you see Splinter. So, our fearsome fighting teens are decorating their Christmas tree in their sewer lair, while in the process Leo sings a poor rendition of Deck the Halls in a Jamaican accent he's suddenly gained out of nowhere. The song is terrible and it concludes with the turtles wishing the Shredder a Merry Christmas. Sadly, he will not be joining us tonight, and I don't blame him one bit. So now that the tree is decorated, the turtles suddenly realize they don't have a gift for Splinter, so they all go up to the streets and walk around without disguises and sing about looking for a gift. But instead of looking, Michaelangelo turns into "that opera guy" and starts singing, and it's surprisingly a decent song. So when that finish, they find a bunch of random stuff and take it back to the sewer.

The turtles rap as they wrap and then present Splinter with his gifts on Christmas morning, and to accompany this, he sings a rendition of The 12 Days of Christmas...as if we haven't suffered enough. Following his song, Splinter lets his students know that their love and devotion to him was gift enough. Awkwardly, Michaelangelo asks if anybody's in the mood for pizza, so they call it in and then a bunch of children show up to dance and sing with the turtles, wishing us a Turtles Christmas.

Wow! This is ungodly, this is unacceptable, this should not exist! Absolutely no thought or effort was put into it. The costumes look terrible, the animatronics are really bad, the script is bad and so is the acting. The songs are all terrible, except for 'Gotta Get a Gift' and 'O Little City of New York'. I can't think of one good reason for this so-called Christmas special to even exist, except this company was DESPERATE to make a quick buck by latching on to a franchise that practically dead by 1995. I blame the third Ninja Turtles movie and revamping the animated series for killing off the franchise, and this We Wish You a Turtle Christmas was the last nail on the coffin. It's stupid! It not only talks down to children, but no child in his or her right mind would be entertained by this, so WHO were they trying to kid? I mean, if the writer, producer, director and the actors put some ACTUAL effort into this, it might have been good. But no, they just threw it together in a desperate attempt to profit. I wonder exactly how much profit they made from this? I don't recall much Ninja Turtles merchandise relating to this or Coming Out of Their Shells. Were they looking to profit from video sales? If so, I can safely assume they didn't make much, because I never saw this video in stores. In fact, I never even knew this special existed until about a month ago, and I really wish I never found out. So I hope they all lost money from this, that somebody is really, really ashamed for ever dreaming up this concept, and let's be thankful that this special never caught on.

Depending upon your temperament, you will either be horrified or amused by this. I am both.My sisters and I find this monstrosity so hilarious that we actually watch and MST3K it every year.

How can I explain how wrong this special is? Ugly turtle costumes that make the latex nightmares in TMNT 3 look like Jim Henson's masterworks in the 1990 film. Leonardo rapping about wrapping presents. Michelangelo singing opera. The turtles all having interchangeable personalities. The fact that they give Splinter things more suited to their taste than his for Christmas. Little kids randomly populating the sewer.

If only Shredder had appeared, then this would have been amazingly terrible. Ah well, try not to watch this before going to bed. You'll have nightmares of lifeless turtle faces for sure.

As the title of this movie suggest. This Christmas special was based off the comic book four anthropomorphic animal superheroes created by Kevin Eastman & Peter Laird; which its franchise grew in popularity in the late 1980s and early 1990s due to the animation television show 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles'. Directed by Larry Osbourne, this 25- minutes video VHS tape has the group searching for a gift for their sensi Splinter performed by Jack William Scott. Coming out just after the trilogy of live action features & the semi awful cheesy "Coming Out of Their Shells" concert tour; including their short stint performing in Disneyland parks. The production had plenty of costumes to used from. Yet they choose easy noticeable removable head masks that have little to no room for facial movement. The turtles are constantly grinning with open mouths throughout the whole special. As for Splinter the rat. The filmmakers reused a costume from the concert tour for that. Yet he still looks like a fat hamster who can barely open his mouth. Because of that the lip-syncing is completely way off from both of the costumes. Then there is the voice acting. The performers wholly forgot lines of dialogue and had little direction with their body movement. They really had to improvise and ab-libs during and between certain musical sequences. It especially got awkward when the undisguised turtles venture into the streets of New York and interaction with the town folks. Seeing them hang out with little poorly timed non-talent drummer childrens during the middle of the night or stealing a bell from Santa Claus in Time Square was just bizarre. It gets even weirder when they get back to their sewer hideout to find random kids dancing in the middle of their musical numbers without any introduction. There is so many questions about this. How in the hell did they find the location so easily yet the villains could not & where did they come from without their parents? I doubt their mothers and fathers would allow them to hang out in a smelly, dangerous, probably super cold urban gutter with no manholes in December with a bunch of mysterious mutants with sharp weapons. Look I get that there is a theory that says that April O'Neil brought them there, but that also begs the question why was she missing in this special. She's pretty much family to them. Even key supporting characters like Casey Jones didn't show up. I guess they couldn't find and paid any more performers with their insanely tiny budget of $5,000. While the poor production values of the special can be at least excused because of that. The music will not. Look I get that the Turtles had to used some public domain songs like 'Deck the Halls' and '12 Days of Christmas' to eat up the runtime, but they could had been a little cleverer with the repetitive change lyrics rather than the somewhat offensive stereotypical Jamaican reggae accents. Maybe perform ninja like dance stunts while singing in different location rather awkward cuts in the same area. Although that might not be the best idea as the costumes are so cheap that the visual seams and zippers could had rip and torn. After all it's disturbing enough that during the performance of the 'Gotta get a gift for Splinter' musical number, the actor Ronn K. Smith playing Leonardo, had his genitals somewhat visible hanging out of his costume. Still seeing them in action would had been a little more entertaining that way than watching Michelangelo (Voiced by James Eric Anzalone) sing New York-themed opera parody of 'Oh Little Town of Bethlehem' alone while the others stand around looking around to bully Santa. Other songs like 'Up from the Sewer' a parody of the 19th century tune of "Over the River and Through the Woods' was fairly short. Too bad the Turtles Rap was not one of them. That hip hop jam in the same vein as Run DMC "Christmas in Hollis," was not up to par. Like a pizza from CEC, it was really cheesy. As for the last song. It so long that it continues over the closing credits to the point that the now-offscreen Turtles start giving their comments regarding it. For me I found it weird that song plays there rather than the opening credits; seeing that the title of this flick is named after it. Instead, the beginning with the awful edited glowing special effects has a really odd silence tone that doesn't really give out the jolly feels of watching this movie might bring forth. The song that followed that 'We're the Turtles' didn't really have the same magic as the concert version. Overall: While some people can be entertained by the so bad it's good production quality. I sadly am not one of them. Being one of two musical live-action Ninja Turtles videos produced by Christopher Films in 1994 with the other being 'Turtle Tunes'. None of them were Cowabunga! They were more like cow dung. Not worth the watch.

A Holiday Classic! #1 Top Selling Albums 10/10 Definitely would shop again next year in September.

"We Wish You a Turtle Christmas" is a Turtles Christmas special from roughly 20 years ago and looking at the IMDb score, it did not get a positive reception at all. That is probably also the reason why director Larry Osborne never made a film after this one again. I personally believe it is not all bad about this one. I mean first of all, the tone of Turtles is very different to Christmas usually, especially the darker, non-comedic one. This is probably why they mostly went for comedy with this one. And for music. Many Christmas songs got the the Turtle touch and were sung by the quartet (and Splinter). My favorite is probably "On the 1st day of Christmas, my Turtle have to me". There is not really a story in here, but at only slightly over 20 minutes that is not as bad as it would have been at 45 minutes. Nonetheless, I agree with the general perception that this is not one of the better Christmas short films. But it's tough. There is obviously no snow down there in the sewers. The songs are okay, the rest is forgettable.

Bottom stinky barnacle of the hollowed out Turtle honey pot, this is surely a topmost contender for the worst and most bizarre Christmas special ever made, but I did laugh a lot one time so there's that fun to be had from it. There were so many lame unnecessary and darn weird touches like the inexplicable Jamaican accent and Michelangelo opera singing and how the Turtles could be so rude as to actually say that "Splinter's not athletic" when he's the very ninja master who trained them! These Turtles looked so bloody hideous with their permanent white toothed ear-to-ear grins! Ew they were Like nasty walking green ventriloquist dummies, the very worst out of any of the live-action versions of the Turtles that have ever been done, why in some scenes you could actually see the goddamn cables sticking out the backs of their heads! And poor Splinter looked absolutely horrendous, rather than looking like a rat, he looks more like that one nastiest most diseased completely bald scabby cat with poop all over it that crazy hermit cat hoarders always seem to have! The whole unabashed ~shameful~ laziness of this 'production' and how it was so bare bones and just presented itself for what it was just tickled me. I mean I'm not blind, it's a stinking waste of film, but I like the idea of something being so completely terrible yet because of that being kind of fun and hilarious at the same time that it could make you go "Hey I can get on board this sinking shipwreck, it's entertaining me!" It's short but you certainly feel every single one of those minutes.. It has to be seen to be believed really, it has a stupid story, annoying songs, the Turtles barely look like themselves, there's zero action, and the Turtles and the gaggle of super-happy kids that follow them around everywhere are so positive and goody-goody that you'll just wanna puke! It's sad too in a way that this was one of the last pitiful hurrahs of the Turtles original(and best) 90s popularity and that they were dragged through the mud with this, it feels like it's rubbing it in somewhere! Who knows, if it had been made three to four years earlier and had money and real effort behind it, it may have turned out to be something that was fun and festive to watch. As it is you're definitely laughing at it, not with! I may get a kind of enjoyment out of it now but it wouldn't have done anything for me as a kid, not even when I was loving the cartoon series and the movies and playing with the action figures, I really don't see how any self-respecting kid over the age of six would ever have admitted to liking this even if they did! Serious fans of the Turtles that don't particularly enjoy seeing them make complete green asses of themselves should probably avoid this nonsensical curio in their history, but if you do like to laugh at some of the craziest crap you've ever seen than by all means have at it and give it a look at least once, it's cheesy on several levels!