Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – Movie Review
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – Movie Review
Director: Jonathan Liebesman
Writers: Josh Appelbaum, André Nemec, Evan Daugherty, Peter Laird (characters), (Kevin Eastman (characters)
Stars: Megan Fox, Will Arnett, William Fichtner, Alan Ritchson, Noel Fisher, Pete Ploszek, Johnny Knoxville (voice), Jeremy Howard,Danny Woodburn, Tony Shalhoub (voice), Tohoru Masamune, Whoopi Goldberg, Minae Noji
Science Fiction Action Comedy Film
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Raphael. Leonardo. Donatello. Michelangelo. Splinter. Four turtles named after Renaissance painters and a rat. What could possibly go wrong?
As it turns out, quite a lot.
I went into this one with a less than open mind. Somewhere, buried in a box, bagged and boarded, are some very old comic books featuring turtles. Signed by Eastman and Laird (the Turtle creators). I watched the original cartoon. And the movies from the 1990s. I am a bonafide turtle fan. I wanted to love this movie.
This movie left me cold.
Back in the 1990s, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were ubiquitous. You couldn’t turn around without tripping over some kind of turtles merchandise (I still use a laundry bag emblazoned with turtles when I travel). When the movies came out, they embraced their turtleness. They scorned the dark and gritty for pure joy. Or as much pure joy and silliness as you can have during ninja on ninja action . . .
The new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles seemed embarrassed by what it was. I wanted to be a little kid watching this. It couldn’t decide whether it wanted to be Dark Knight-level solemn or cartoon goofy, and ended up failing at both.
There are some exciting moments – things blow up with astonishing regularity, and there are some epic chase sequences. The martial arts fights aren’t bad–but they’re so fast it’s hard to tell what’s going on. The best of them involved Splinter – after all, he taught the turtles how to be ninjas. But the plot is full of holes. Big holes. So big you thought about them while the movie was still in front of you rocking and socking along.
There is really good differentiation between the turtles – not only an individually colored mask, each turtle is a slightly different size and build, and is voiced very effectively. Kudos to the voice actors who did an outstanding job!
The turtles are seriously accessorized – which actually got a little distracting. Michelangelo looked like Mr. T’s green, half-shelled brother, and Donatello was weighed down with all the gadgets he was toting around. Worse still, the movie didn’t accept its campiness.
Too much of the story followed April O’Neil (Megan Fox)– did they forget the name of the movie was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? This wouldn’t have been so bad if they’d given her a solid story arc, but mostly she was either not being taken seriously by her employers (or anyone else), or running around taking advantage of her friend/cameraman Vern (Will Arnett), who just couldn’t say “no.”
There’s a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon TV series – although the movie contradicts it, I’m sure the new generation of young fans will still enjoy seeing live action Ninja Turtles on the big screen. Everyone else – just go see Guardians of the Galaxy again. You’ll be glad you did.
Reviewed by Elektra Hammond
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Elektra Hammond
Elektra lives in Delaware with her husband, Mike, and the cat herd of BlueBlaze/Benegesserit catteries. When not freelancing or appearing at science fiction conventions she travels world-wide judging cat shows.
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