POP MUSIC REVIEW : Multifaceted...

To borrow a phrase: I have seen the future of rock ‘n’ roll, and its names are Leonardo, Michaelangelo, Donatello and Raphael.

Having conquered Saturday-morning TV, the toy stores and the movies, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have moved on to the next inevitable avenue--music--and, in its current one-dimensional state, it’s the perfect vehicle for them.

At the Universal Amphitheatre on Wednesday night, in the first of nine shows there, the Ninja Turtles did a dead-on parody of flat, pumped-up arena rock, and made it seem more genuine in all their reptilian pseudo-naivete than a similar show by such experienced human hands as, say, Slaughter.

The up-from-under-the-streets imagery in the already double-platinum album “Coming Out of Our Shells” (“We just kept practicing / We stayed underground / ‘Cause singin’ in the sewer / Is a wonderful sound”) is nearly as funny as the up-from-the-streets self-mythologizing of a Bon Jovi.

Purists will object, of course. But how far back do you have to go to remember a time in which rock ‘n’ roll cartoonishness wasn’t a redundancy? Hasn’t it always been easier to think of Milli Vanilli as life-size representations of animated figures, like Charlie Brown at the Ice Capades, than as real people? Isn’t even Luther Campbell basically Fritz the Cat personified?

Speaking of the Milli boys, though, there is one potential chink in the Turtles’ shells, for, at the opening-night show, not everything was as it might have seemed.

Lead guitarist Michaelangelo’s three-fingered picking technique sounded suspiciously like a normal five-fingered technique, and more often than not instruments were abandoned altogether while the music played on.

Is the show completely live? If not, can the youth of America stand any more disillusionment? Dare we ask if the Ninja Turtles--we’ll say it in pig-Latin so the kids can’t hear-- iplay ynchsay ? For that matter, do turtles have lips?

In a recent interview with New York’s Newsday, Michaelangelo addressed the question by comparing the Ninjas’ approach to that of several popular dance-pop artists. “When we don’t have a lot of things to do on stage, we are singing,” he said. “But when we have some dancing to do . . . we have tracks going so we can give the best performance.”

If impenetrable green masks left the issue a mystery, there was no question that Sherie Scott, playing ace reporter April O’Neil in the show, was singing live, and very well, for her lone ballad. Also very much live and apparently ad-libbing was the villainous Shredder, who interrupted the show mid-way in his ongoing plot to destroy the Ninjas and their mystical rat master Splinter.

Shredder drew boos from the small fry but, as far as the parents present were concerned, had all the best lines. (“Turtles, fasten your kneepads--it’s going to be a bumpy night! April, I’m going to get you, and your little rat too!”) He even “shredded” a Flo and Eddie album, claiming he hates those other Turtles too.

Mom and Dad may feel the urge early on to drown their turtlemania in a good, stiff drink. Don’t count on it: Even the Amphitheatre’s bars have been taken over for use as merchandise counters. Sticking around, though, the folks may be pleased to learn that an occasional bit of dialogue has been thrown in expressly for them and that, as these experiences go, this well-paced, well-produced show is a relatively painless one.

A lot less painful than it’ll be taking the kids to see Poison when they get a few years older, anyway. Count your blessings, and have another slice of pepperoni.