Turtle Fever : Premiere: Parents take their children out of school early to attend Ventura County’s first screenings of “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.”

Matt Geddes, 5, clutched a stuffed green turtle and bounced with anticipation Friday at the prospect of seeing his two favorite heroes, Raphael and Donatello.

Hardly a precocious student of Italian Renaissance art, Matt is a Ninja Turtle fan who--along with about two dozen other mostly preschool-age children--showed up for the Ventura County premiere of the movie “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.”

Matt’s heroes, along with their half-shelled companions Leonardo and Michelangelo, are crime-fighting turtles, the subject of an enormously popular children’s TV cartoon series, video games and a line of clothing.

The Ninja Turtle movie had its first county showing at the Oaks Mall in Thousand Oaks Friday morning.

“I just like them,” Matt said as he waited to enter the theater. “I like them because they’re good.”

In Ventura County, the Ninja Turtles are expected to be so popular that some parents said they took their children out of school early on Friday to beat the long lines anticipated at the three theaters where the film is playing.

To the uninitiated, the appeal of the turtles may be elusive. Victims of a mysterious nuclear accident, the turtles take on human characteristics and learn martial arts from their spiritual leader, a human-sized rat named Splinter.

In the movie, the fun-loving, pizza-eating green creatures live in the sewers beneath New York City, wield martial-arts weapons, perform acrobatic stunts and wage war against their sworn enemies, the evil underground organization The Foot, led by The Shredder.

An implausible plot?

Not to Ninja Turtle enthusiasts such as Chad Lundahl, 5, of Thousand Oaks.

“I love them whether they’re a cartoon or a movie,” Chad said. “I like Michelangelo because he talks like a surfer.”

Parent Connie Angove said she took her son, Wesley, 7, out of Little Oaks Elementary School early and brought him to the mall for an 11:45 showing.

“It’s a family thing, and that’s always worthwhile,” Angove said.

At the Mann Buenaventura Theater in Ventura, where the movie is showing more than 10 times a day on two screens, manager John Powers said the theater’s first showing at 11:45 a.m. Friday sold out.

At after-school showings Friday afternoon, children and parents were lined up outside the theater, and more than 100 advance tickets were sold for a 7:15 p.m. showing.

Some parents professed ignorance of the subterranean crime fighters.

“My kids were discussing the names and I said, ‘Who are these people?’ ” Fred Lewkowitz, a tourist from New York, said as he waited for his son, Sal, 8, to come out of the theater.

Ninja Turtle fans wondered whether the movie would live up to the popular animated video features, such as “Turtles on the Half Shell.”

Christopher McLean, 5, gave the film a good review.

“It was great,” he said. “It was a wisecracking green team. My favorite is Leonardo. He was awesome.”

Parent Barbara Bojorquez predicted that her sons, Aaron, 7, and Danny, 5, would see the movie more than once.

“If I didn’t take them, they’d bug the life out of me. . . . I don’t think this is going to be my last time here.”