Ninja Turtles

When the first Ninja Turtles movie came out in 1990, it was an ABSOLUTE BLAST to watch, simply because it was a faithful adaptation of the comic books with character development and stunning visuals to boot; no thanks in part to Jim Henson's workshop of wonders.

I've skipped out on this movie when it was first released, but having just watched it now, I could say with all honesty that I was entertained for the most part, but said enjoyment was marred by the underdeveloped characters; just like it was in the first Transformers movie directed by Michael Bay and even though he only produced this film, his influence clearly is felt throughout this film; especially in the script, which is filled with tired, cliched dialogue and plot twists you can see coming a mile away. The end result is a widely derivative and phoned in experience.

Aside from that, I enjoyed the fight scenes, which are a plenty, though strangely and surprisingly enough, aren't as numerous and overblown like the Transformers films, but they do their job admirably.

But the biggest problem with the film is lack of character development. It's a shame that Megan Fox gets more screentime than the turtles; barely does Kirai and Shredder get any development and as a whole, the film feels disjointed and unbalanced. The original film had a nice balance between character development and action, something this film sorely lacks. Nobody expects Oscar-winning material in a Ninja Turtles movie, but at the very least, flesh out the characters more other than let one of them hog the spotlight for a significant amount of time.

So in conclusion, I suppose the film was entertaining on it's own merits, but ultimately, it was underwhelming.

Sad really, because I was really looking forward to a return to form from the titular reptilian heroes.

Here we go…

So Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is the reboot to the ever so popular Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise. Directed by Jonathan Liebesman for some reason and produced by Michael Bay, also for some reason.. You all know the story by now. 4 mutated turtles grow up in the sewer raised by a giant rat who knows martial arts and trains them so they can protect the city from Shredder. No difference in this movie.

So the movie opens up in sort of a graphic novel type animation telling the story of the turtles which I'll admit was a nice nod to the original source material from which Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles came from. From there we meet April (Megan Fox) who's trying to get a story about the evil foot clan that have been terrorizing the city. She then witnesses the turtles stop them and follows them to get evidence of their existence. The turtles stop her and return to their master who says they need April's help. I won't spoil why. From there they must work together and stop Shredder from releasing a toxin on the city.

I wanted simply one thing from this movie after all the crap I've seen from it over the last few years. I want the turtles to be the turtles. I want them to reflect how they were in the 2003 cartoon preferably. A darker take but still humorous and likable. I grew up on that and the 80's cartoon and 1990's movies. Thank the lord I got that. The turtles are the best part of this movie. They deliver some funny lines although not everyone of them hit. Like you can feel that the jokes were modeled for kids which the whole movie is basically. It's like a big toy commercial. Or a Crush soda commercial. Or a Samsung phone and tablet commercial. Yeeeeah lot of product placement in this movie. Very obvious at that. Anyways as for the other characters we have April O'Neil played by Megan Fox who was alright. I really wish they worked on her dramatic screams though because those were just awful. We also have Will Arnett as her camera man who I guess is supposed to be the comic relief in this movie but literally does not have one funny joke in the whole thing even though you can feel you're supposed to be laughing but I didn't even smirk. It was like watching a stand up comic bomb his performance. Splinter was an enjoyable character. You could really see how he tied this family together.

Now if there's one thing I like in a movie it's a good villain. Did I get this? No. No I did not. Shredder has no character to him at all. In the 2003 version of him he got all this character development and I learned the motivation behind why he did what he did. In this he's literally just a guy who wants to make money. Or at least help Eric Sacks (William Fichtner) make money which is a very stupid motivation in my book. Usually villains steal money for the purpose of something bigger but in this.. they just want money. Which Eric already has because he lives in a freakin castle on top of a mountain! How much more money does he need?! Sigh.. Shredder was just so one dimensional and uninteresting. I was so let down by this.

Well what about the effects? They're actually pretty good. They did make the turtles sweat a lot though. Like A LOT. But it looked nice so I was happy about that. One downside is the CGI went down a little when interacting with humans. Like in Transformers 4. Not much to say other than those two things because I didn't focus on it much.

One last thing and I know every reviewer is saying this but it can't be said enough. The climax of this movie literally is the end of The Amazing Spider-Man only in the day time. Seriously watch The Amazing Spider-Man before you see this and see how similar it is. It's crazy.

Going in if you know this director and producer you're not expecting anything amazing. I went in with extremely low expectations and they surpassed them but only very very slightly.

I give it a 5.5/10.

The theater had a bunch of 10 year olds who thought the movie was amazing so at least they hit their target audience. But as a long time Ninja Turtles fan I left disappointed and wanting a little more. If it earns back the money maybe a sequel will be better. It won't but a guy can dream.

There's hardly a kid born from the 80s who has never heard of this totally bodacious group of walking, talking, pizza-eating, street-fighting reptiles. It has always been a goofy saga, but it was also hip, action-packed, and colorful. Can the same be said about the latest adaptation?

On the surface level, 2014's TMNT at least looks the part. It's a fairly breezy film that never takes itself seriously, packing on generous heapings of goofy comedy, stylish action scenes, and loads of special effects. The first half of the film takes its time to follow April O'Neil around, who inevitably uncovers the secret of the turtles' existence, and the outlandish Foot Clan plot to take over New York City. The last half of the film is pretty much all-out fighting and action, which includes a fight in the sewers, a lengthy chase scene down the slopes of a mountain, and a final showdown on top of a skyscraper. Thus, I found the last half of the film the most engaging.

It's still not without its problems though. Despite the light-hearted tone and all the jokes, very little of it made me laugh outright. The humor is quite low-brow and doofy. Action scenes will be a hit and a miss; fight scenes in the film's first half are horribly shot and edited (on purpose nonetheless). Later scenes are still hectic, but are at least watchable and fairly fun. Scenes in between try their best to keep things rolling fast and without becoming droll, but without any major emotional investment, these scenes tend to drag a bit.

Beyond the surface-level comedy and action, there's not much else to this film. The plot is pretty much a mash-up of typical TMNT fare and 2007's Transformers (also an adaptation of an 80s cartoon where human characters discover some weird life form and gets caught in the middle of a war nobody knew existed; both starring Megan Fox nonetheless). What plot the movie has is riddled with plot holes, and scenes that are simply way too unbelievable (maybe not a valid complaint for TMNT, but with the way the film tries to look believable, the film shoots its own creditability in the foot). The turtle characters are fun to watch, usually, and Splinter is one cool rat. They aren't terribly deep characters, but they are colorful, and there is just enough background to them to keep them from being total caricatures. Other characters aren't as good: April O'Neil is almost annoying as she obsesses over the turtles and shouts her findings at everybody she runs across. Her sidekick is a dork. Shredder is extremely flat, lifeless, and lacking in presence, serving little more than an excuse to have a boss fight at the end of the movie. The film draws some connections between all the characters to give their interactions more backing, but it only strains the creditability of the plot even further.

The film's photography looks good sometimes and terrible at other times. Editing is choppy. Acting is pretty lackluster from the whole crowd; Megan Fox is far from endearing despite her looks, the voice acting can be a hit or a miss, and other actors don't really take their roles seriously, for better or for worse. Writing is pretty daft. This production uses okay-looking sets, props, and costumes. Locales are pretty small-scale most of the time. Special effects vary from good to bad. Music is okay (I got to admit that I found the end credits song catchy).

This incarnation of the Turtles definitely has its flaws, but it tries to be a fun picture, and it is at least partway successful. Not everybody will be quite as easily charmed as I am, so I'm compelled to recommend approaching this movie with caution.

3/5 (Entertainment: Pretty Good | Story: Marginal | Film: Marginal)

Micheal Bay produced the TMNT franchise with updated CGI and a more Transformers like action sequences with a heavy dose of cheesiness.

Reporter April O'Neil (Megan Fox) discovers the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were her childhood pets that had been injected with a mutagent by a corporation run by her late father and his partner Eric Sacks (William Fichtner.) Her cameraman Vern Fenwick (Will Arnett) tries to help her out while everyone thinks she is crazy about her rantings of vigilante turtles. Meanwhile a criminal gang led by Shredder plan to unleash a virus throughout the city.

The film is entertaining for kids and is undemanding fun. There are explosions, dramatic and over the top action sequences, plenty of quips, a comedy sidekick in Will Arnett. The film avoids the flabbiness that marred the Transformer sequels and like a McDonalds cheeseburger, it fills you up in the short term and would soon be quickly forgotten. Still nothing wrong with a bit of mindless diet of junk every now and then.

No matter how the name Michael Bay is attached to a fantasy adaptation, people will complain anything about the project. But as a producer, does it affect much to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Surprisingly yes. As the same as the public response about the Transformers franchise, people turned out to be ranting at the wrong stuff. At the post-viewing, maybe we can accept the heavy reliance to cartoony CGI, or the large amount of explosions, or the really poor plot. The real sin of these movies is its lack of interest to its main heroes and instead focuses on the human characters. Which is a shame, because it somewhat gets it right with the turtles, their stories are more interesting than the one we ended up seeing. The film does have some rewarding moments, but it just keeps hindering us to the less interesting parts which makes it disappointing.

It is clear that if follows the same screen writing rules of the last Bay franchise. Instead of being about the Ninja Turtles, it rather centers on April O'Neil. Instead of fearing the Foot Clan, the threat would rather focus in some evil corporal manager. Any larger-than-life characters from the source material have only left out as the secondary need of the journey: the turtles are now plot devices and the Shredder is, for some reason, a henchman. I bet the fact that Casey Jones wears a mask is the reason why we can't have him in this film. For the story of April, it might only work as a subplot. There isn't enough theme or intrigue to accomplish unlike the one from its actual heroes. There is some talk about Raphael mistreating his brothers, which is a theme that was already done better in the past TMNT movies, and Master Splinter's backstory as the turtles' father, which is only presented for expository need. They don't get the development they deserve, which makes the drama in the end feels so forced and less than effective.

April's arc would have been tolerable if it gives her more moments to actually connect with the turtles, but the only information it could provide is that they're her childhood pets, she's only using those beloved characters to her job, teasing us the much interesting world beneath the sewers. The palpable respect we may give to this film is the humor. It may not be fantastic and all, but it's not bad either, at least it defines one of its personalities. The action is obviously large and destructive, well at least we get to see more ninja action. The acting is predictable: Megan Fox's humanless expressions make her April O'Neil difficult to root for. The voice and motion-capture actors worked better for having a sense of fun in their enthusiasm.

The single greatest scene of the film is when the turtles are making a tune out of an elevator sound. That is one of the reasons why we love these characters anyway. Newcomers will still convince the fans to give up nostalgia and move on to the changes, but that doesn't mean it has to diminish it as a generic/bland action blockbuster. The film just won at the box office, so definitely there will be a sequel. The only advice we could wholeheartedly give is to have more love to the heroes. We did saw that occasionally, but we hope to have more of their sewer life with their pop cultural obsession and mass consumption of pizza, plus have interesting villains, some real and not forced familial themes, and at least a solid plot since these Ninja Turtles movies hardly ever had one. The fights were the only parts that weren't tamed from them, because apparently that is what the filmmakers are mostly interested at. It just isn't enough, and as a fan, they should have focused on rebuilding its already richer world than this.