TMNT Tops Weekend Box Office 20 Years Too Late

As far as we were concerned, nobody would go and watch TMNT - the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie - because only an idiot would watch a film about some computer-generated tortoises that nobody has even thought about for two decades.

But look how wrong we were - TMNT is the number one movie at the US weekend box office. The success of TMNT means we can assume that there are either $25 million's worth of nostalgia-fuelled morons in America who can't quite remember that the original series of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was basically a cheap-looking calling card for some toys; or that all the TMNT box office tickets were bought by Vanilla Ice, who figured that if TMNT did enough box office business he could start punting around for the same sort of confusing extended cameo in the TMNT sequel as he had in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret Of The Ooze.  

TMNT is the new top movie at the weekend box office this week, meaning that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - forever the Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles to a generation of mollycoddled British twentysomethings who weren't allowed to hear the word 'ninja' in case it suddenly turned them into wayward arsonists - are enjoying a success that they haven't experienced for 20 years. Fingers crossed this box office result means that TMNT will convince a brand new army of children that only eating pizza will turn them into muscular crime-fighters instead of diabetes-ridden lardbuckets with chronic acne, no girlfriend and a life expectancy somewhere short of 20. And where's Krang in TMNT, anyway? We find his non-appearance in the movie offensive to all the world's gay-sounding disembodied brains with eyeballs and hands who live in the stomach of mute bald robots, and we shall be writing angry letters accordingly. Here's this weekend's US weekend box office top five…

1 - TMNT (If TMNT getting to the top of the weekend box office means that someone commissions a Biker Mice From Mars movie, we're going to be very upset. Less upset if someone commissions a Samurai Pizza Cat movie, obviously) $25,450,000

2 - 300 (How foolish 300 must feel that its been beaten at the box office by a cold fish movie rehash of a children's cartoon. Maybe if King Leonidas and his men had been trained by a five-foot mutated rat things would have been different) $20,510,000

3 - Shooter (Where Mark Wahlberg follows up his Oscar-nominated turn in the critical and commercial blockbuster The Departed by appearing in a shonky-looking 24 ripoff) $14,501,000

4 - Wild Hogs (The combined box office appeal of John Travolta, Martin Lawrence and Tim Allen is now $11 million less than some cartoon tortoises saying "cowabunga" a lot. Fittingly) $14,362,000

5 - The Last Mimzy (We can't overstate how much we wish the makers of The Last Mimzy would retitle the name of their movie to something that sounds slightly less puerile to British people, something like Stinky Bum Gypsy Minge for instance) $10,200,000

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Weekend Box Office - Box Office Mojo