Review: ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’

Well even though this is a PG-13 film featuring numerous acts of violence and many instances of gun play, as well as a scene of general mayhem and carnage which surely and undoubtedly resulted in the deaths of numerous innocent bystanders, “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” the 2014 edition is still a kids movie and it feels like bad form to just come out and shit all over a kids movie. Yet sometimes these things must be done, in the name of all that is right and most excellent.

Starting out as a satirical comic series for more adult-minded folks in the early 1980s, and then quickly becoming adapted into a television show for kids, “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” has somehow managed to stick around for all of these years, constantly being reinvented, new television shows made for new generations of children, a trilogy of movies made in the 1990s and a recent animated movie, Turtle Power has turned out to be a real thing, which is pretty incredible considering how insanely ridiculous this whole mutated turtles in their teenage years using their karate skills to be ninjas concept really is. Something about it resonates though and keeps people coming back for more. Which is why we are here, in the year 2014, with a big budget live action movie featuring CG-turtles, as well as a CG-talking rat guy.

This is definitely yet another “origin” story, as we get the backstory for the turtles mostly in a really clunky opening narration and then with a couple of reveals later on. It is worth noting that the origin story in this movie of the turtles is changed from previous versions, in that the main bad guy Shredder has no personal connection at all to the rat and turtles that go on to be mutated into very large walking, talking human-like things. Instead in this story Shredder is just a dude looking to take control of a whole city, and he has a gang at his disposal, and nothing else. And the turtles happened to be vigilantes and they just happen to be odds. Sure there is a connection to a different bad guy, one played by the great William Fichtner, but he’s just a rich corporate scumbag dude who teamed up with the Shredder for some diabolical plan, and again the connection between him and the turtles isn’t very emotional or personal.

And then the four turtles themselves are kind of lacking in definition. There isn’t much of a dynamic between them and they don’t seem as well defined here as they have been in previous movies and television shows. There is the now prerequisite bickering between Leonardo and Raphael over who is the leader, but they really don’t get into it. And Donatello is smart cause he has a bunch of gadgets, but otherwise doesn’t do anything particularly smart, and Michelangelo is just a dumb guy who gets really creepy around intrepid reporter April O’Neil, played by Megan Fox.

And at least in this movie they kinda centered the story around the April O’Neil character, making her the main protagonist for at least the first half of the movie, which is refreshing considering how seldom big budget kids movies are made with a female hero. So that’s something.

Otherwise, this movie doesn’t have much going for it. The CG Turtles never looked real to me at any point, where as the CG giant rat aka Splinter looked pretty real from time to time, which is ultimately unsettling due to the fact that Splinter in this movie is just ugly as hell to look at.

So the kids will enjoy this movie but they are kids hence they are stupid and have very poor taste and judgement when it comes to art, so take that for what you will. One day maybe we’ll get a sweet, out of this world, over the top “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” movie featuring Krang and Dimension X and Neutrinos and Rock Steady and BeBop and all the other weird ass things that made the original Turtles so special and weird and odd and strange and wonderful, but day ain’t today.