{"id":1804,"date":"2017-04-17T09:30:53","date_gmt":"2017-04-17T09:30:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lifeatthemovies\/?p=1804"},"modified":"2017-04-17T09:30:53","modified_gmt":"2017-04-17T09:30:53","slug":"family-really-cares-teenagers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lifeatthemovies\/2017\/04\/family-really-cares-teenagers.html","title":{"rendered":"Family really cares for teenagers after all"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Kids who go wayward may get the impression that their families don\u2019t really care. Dad is too busy. There is no time for Mom and Dad to hang out with me, some teenagers may think.<\/p>\n<p>Some teenagers may bond with surrogate families. They bond with a group of friends that may or may not be good for them.<\/p>\n<p>Some may go the way of the hood for their family. The hood seems to care, they take an interest.<\/p>\n<p>The surrogate family is a theme in the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990), but it doesn\u2019t end with a surrogate family. Turns out that the kid\u2019s families of origin truly care after all, but how did the kids see that?<\/p>\n<p>In Ninja Turtles, New York City is going through a crime wave. The city is infested by a criminal \u2018import\u2019, the Shredder, who\u2019s taking in young men as allies, who think their families don\u2019t care for them.<\/p>\n<p>The father that\u2019s absent, but who really loves and cares for his kids, is a plot-line here. The kids go off with their surrogate family in the hood, while their families wonder what\u2019s gone wrong.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s when the good guys, the ninja turtles and their pals, figure out a way to convince the young men that they are being used, is when the boys start to see their involvement with a criminal mastermind in a negative light. Families may not always have the time for their teenagers, but underneath, they are the ones who really care.<\/p>\n<h4>The movie<\/h4>\n<p>The original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film flexes the good nature, humor and verbal exchanges of the four ninja turtle crime fighters\u2014Donatello, Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael. \u00a0The 1990 film also features a time capsule piece on the state of law and order\u2014a bit dated perhaps\u2014yet these themes may still resonate today.<\/p>\n<p>A highlight is the character Splinter, a mutated talking rat, who\u2019s the ninja\u2019s mentor. That if you think about is a bit gross, but he somehow manages to make us see the good side.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kids who go wayward may get the impression that their families don\u2019t really care. Dad is too busy. There is no time for Mom and Dad to hang out with me, some teenagers may think. Some teenagers may bond with surrogate families. They bond with a group of friends that may or may not be&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":602,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,321],"tags":[6,61,311,145,8,10,40,16,7,24,39,12,245],"class_list":["post-1804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-action-movies","category-family","tag-action-movies","tag-classics","tag-family","tag-fantasy-film","tag-film","tag-film-commentaries","tag-justice","tag-life","tag-movies","tag-problems","tag-relationships","tag-second-chance","tag-themes"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Family really cares for teenagers after all - Life at the Movies<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, nofollow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Family really cares for teenagers after all - Life at the Movies\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Kids who go wayward may get the impression that their families don\u2019t really care. 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There is no time for Mom and Dad to hang out with me, some teenagers may think. Some teenagers may bond with surrogate families. 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I enjoy catching up with sport, listening to music, buying a coffee, and keeping an eye on current events. First \u2018awesome\u2019 movie moment was Raiders of the Lost Ark. Amadeus, first \u2018serious\u2019 film. A 3 star rating out of 5 stars is above average from me.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.peteswriting.wordpress.com","https:\/\/x.com\/peteswriting"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lifeatthemovies\/author\/pveugelaers"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lifeatthemovies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lifeatthemovies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lifeatthemovies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lifeatthemovies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/602"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lifeatthemovies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1804"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lifeatthemovies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1804\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1805,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lifeatthemovies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1804\/revisions\/1805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lifeatthemovies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lifeatthemovies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lifeatthemovies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}