Review: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

The evil Foot Clan is wreaking havoc across the city and ambitious reporter April O’Neil (Megan Fox) wants to get a big scoop to impress her boss. What she stumbles upon is The Foot being attacked by shadowy avengers of some kind. These avengers eventually reveal themselves to be the title pubescent (?) reptiles, who live in the sewers and are the thought-to-be-dead product of a mutation experiment that April’s father was working on when she was a little girl. Yes, these are the same test subjects she helped name after famous artists that she was totally aware of as a child. They are; Stoic leader Leonardo (Motion-Capture performance by Pete Plozek, but voiced by a bland Johnny Knoxville), juvenile party dude Michaelangelo (Noel Fisher, a million miles from TV’s “Shameless”), brainiac Donatello (Jeremy Howard), and the brooding warrior Raphael (Alan Ritchson). Their sensei is a former lab rat turned sage paternal figure named Splinter (Danny Woodburn, but voiced by an unrecognisable Tony Shalhoub). The big evil plot here involves Foot leader Shredder (Tohoru Masamune) attempting to release the mutagen that birthed the turtles and Splinter, into the wider community. Or something like that. William Fichtner turns up as a smarmy rich former business partner of April’s deceased father (who totally isn’t a bad guy at all- honest!), Whoopi Goldberg (seemingly distracted and vaguely cognisant- just like she is on TV!) plays April’s bemused boss, while Will Arnett plays April’s bemused cameraman.

 

I can’t quite remember exactly when I stopped liking the Ninja Turtles, because I distinctly remember seeing the first two films, but I don’t remember how I actually felt about them, except that I didn’t love them. I do however, remember watching and enjoying the cartoon and owning several of the toys, so I must’ve been a fan of the franchise for at least a while (Yet I had no idea they were a comic book creation until years later. Go figure!). The Turtles (That’s the Ninja Turtles, not the hit-makers behind the brilliant ‘Happy Together’) never really went away, as there have been a few more TV incarnations, an animated movie, and now here’s the 2014 live-action version for the current generation directed by Jonathan Liebesman (the underrated “Wrath of the Titans” the unwatchable “Battle: Los Angeles”). It’s extremely colourful and the CGI creatures look terrific, but overall it’s not significantly better than the 1990 film (though, as I said, I remember very little about it, so who knows?). It’s a bit less juvenile, I suppose, but I would’ve preferred an entirely CGI film. That’s how strong the CGI is here, and how annoying the rest is.

 

Producer Michael Bay (“Transformers”, “The Rock”) has clearly instructed cinematographer Lula Carvalho to go with the shaky-cam mode of camerawork, which is annoying and undoes some of the good work Carvalho and the FX team do in the visual department. Or maybe it was a directive from Liebesman, whose shaky “Battle: Los Angeles” was a visually incoherent eye-sore. I also found it strange that despite some of the actors playing/voicing them being white, the Turtles here seemed distinctly African-American in voice and attitude…but the more I thought about it (i.e. For about two seconds), I wasn’t sure what I even meant by that idea, and decided that I was just being silly. It probably wouldn’t make sense for them to be skater/surfer dude types in 2014 (Or maybe it would. I literally know nothing about kids today. I’m old. And I hate kids). They’re Ninja Turtles for the youngsters of today, so having them raised on hip-hop culture is probably smart and natural, and really it’s only Michaelagelo who seems like a real hippity-hopper, and since he’s always been the party animal of the group, it makes sense. And they do still retain some of the skateboard-riding anyway. Aside from Michaelangelo, they’re all kinda interchangeable as characters. If I weren’t already familiar with the characters, the only significant difference I’d detect between them is that Michaelangelo is a tool who needed to be punched out. He was every kid’s favourite when I was young, but he’s super-annoying in this.

 

As for leading lady Megan Fox, she has two acting modes: Open-mouthed pout and closed-mouthed pout. Hey, that’s one more than Kristen Stewart, at least. The film begins well with a cool graphic novel-like opener to get us up to speed. However, it’s not long before the unnecessary shaky-cam and Megan Fox failing to act bring things down. The supporting cast of comedically-inclined people is a bit of a headscratcher (Whoopi Goldberg, Chris Wylde, Taran Killam, Will Arnett), with Arnett spending the entire film with a ‘I do NOT want to be here’ look plastered on his face. Meanwhile, when William Fichtner turns up as a rich guy, he might as well be playing a guy named Dominic Badguy. Normally the highlight of a film, Fichtner actually phones it in for once. He’s playing the least surprising bad guy of the decade, so perhaps Fichtner just didn’t give a shit. I also wasn’t buying Megan Fox as someone who would name four turtles after famous artists. Even I first heard those names from this franchise, and I’m willing to bet I was more cultured as a kid than she has been at any stage in her life. As Shredder, Tohoru Masamune is far more badass and fearsome before he suits up, disappointingly.

 

Take out the shaky-cam and the lens flares and you’ve got a seriously pretty-looking film. However, you’ve still got a pretty uneven film and it still stars Megan Fox, backed up by a disinterested William Fichtner and a suicidally unhappy Will Arnett (he looks like he’s about to vomit when he delivers the ‘heroes in a half-shell’ line. Watch it and tell me I’m wrong!). It’s a lot better than it could’ve been, but nothing substantial. It’s just sorta…there, but at least it’s better than any of the “Transformers” films, as the turtles themselves are given far more emphasis than the title characters in those bloated misfires. Based on the Eastman and Laird comics, the screenplay is by Josh Appelbaum (“Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol”), Evan Daugherty (“Snow White and the Huntsman”, the terrible “Killing Season”), and Andre Nemec (“Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol”).

 

Rating: C+