Mini Review - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Alright, let’s start with my history with this group

Yeah, I’ve not seen any of the shows, or any of the movies, I just happened to hear all the buzz for this one, in particular an element I’ll discuss later. Released in 2014, it made nearly $500m on its $125m budget, earning a modest profit for the studios involved and enough to get a sequel, but a story for another day.

Critics were less than happy with it, it holds a 22% rating on Rotten Tomatoes with an average 4.2/10 score, audiences took to it a bit better, it holds a 51% audience rating with an average 3.3/5 score, still not fantastic by any means.

The story sadly focuses on Megan Fox playing April O’Neill, a reporter who wants to be taken seriously and will put herself in dangerous situations to do so, gee sounds like no-one you’ve ever heard of. OK, it’s a stereotype that can be well handled, see what they did with Mary Jane in the PS4 Spider-man for a good example. But here, April is a moron unless the plot requires her not to be.

So, what about the turtles? Well, they were April’s childhood pets (??) who she rescued from a lab fire then sent them into the sewers for some reason. Yeah… giving the turtles a prior connection to April makes sense from a narrative standpoint, as it means we can skip over the relatively boring stage, the problem is the actual story they come up with is complete and utter nonsense.

It gets worse, you want to know how they learned ninjitsu? Apparently Splinter came across a book, written in Japanese no less and used it to teach himself and then the turtles. As stupid as that is, I like the dynamic Splinter has with them, I kind of like the scene where he tries to break the turtles with a series of balancing tricks, and eventually tempts them with a 99-cheese Pizza. It’s the exact level of adorable fun I’m looking for in something called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Sadly, April’s plotline is, conversely, relatively boring, which is especially a problem since it takes up most of the runtime. She isn’t taken seriously as a journalist, because she’s an idiot talking about 6ft turtles running around New York that only she has seen and has no evidence to back up. Oprah was right to fire her ass for that! Also, why is Oprah in this movie? You have more dignity than this!

The dynamic between the turtles and their relationships is given very little time. From what I can tell, Leonardo is the leader, Raphael is the dark, brooding, angry one, Michelangelo is the comic relief and Donatello is the nerd, all of which factor so little into this plot, you may as well forget about them.

Speaking of forgettable, the villains. The Foot Clan were a parody of sorts to Marvel’s the Hand. Now they’re both boring as sh*t. What’s their plan? It’s a cliché ‘unleash a virus that only we have the cure to’ bullsh*t. Eric Sacks and the Shredder could easily have been the same character and from what I can tell, they were originally.

So special effects, like with Transformers the focus on the human characters is likely to save money on effects work, so does that pay off with the action scenes? Partly, the action is at least more comprehensible than an average Transformers movie, the problem is the design of the turtles looks really ugly.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has the seedlings of a good movie, but the execution leaves it feeling rather dull, not helped by uninspired villains, and a lack of character development amongst the turtles themselves.

Rating 35/100