Ninja Turtles Pack ‘Em in at Premiere

They are the top-selling action toy in the country, a TV cartoon show and a video game. They live in Manhattan’s sewers, subsist on Domino’s-delivered pizza and learn martial arts from a 4-foot-tall rat that resembles ALF but sounds like Luke Skywalker’s guru, Yoda.

As any media-saturated pre-teen could tell you, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are now movie stars (“lean, green and on the screen”) in an eponymous live-action New Line Cinema film that premiered Saturday morning in Universal City’s Cineplex Odeon.

Aside from being the biggest break any turtle has ever gotten in Hollywood, the screening of “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” was a fund-raiser hosted by the Permanent Charities Committee for the United Friends of the Children, which aids MacLaren Children’s Center, and the Westside Children’s Center.

It’s difficult to pinpoint precisely the Ninja Turtles’ screen appeal, but Robin Williams came closest when he described the film’s mix of Japanese martial arts and battling terrapins as being “like Kurasawa meets Cousteau.”

The 1,000 children present, including almost 100 from MacLaren, had a chance to meet ace Ninja Turtle Leonardo during the post-screening party held in the basement of Universal’s parking garage. Besides being able to “slap threes” with a reptile and tour a drizzling, oozing model of the Turtles’ sewer abode, the kids were indulged with what a Ninja Turtle would call “a major pizza attack, dude”--575 pies were donated by the California Pizza Kitchen. Completing the if-kids-ruled-the-world menu were hundreds of sundaes from Baskin-Robbins.

Among those dining were Martin Short with five children in tow, Denzel Washington with his family, Pierce Brosnan with son Sean, Graham Nash with his two boys, and the film’s stars Elias Koteas and Judith Hoag, who said that after acting with Ninja Turtles, “working with Brando is the next logical step.”