Is "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" A Successful Reboot?

By Brian Frosti on August 11, 2014

Image via veryaware.com

The heroes in a half shell are back, but not quite as you remembered them.

Paramount Studios and Nickelodeon Movies have reimagined the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in similar fashion to Michael Bay’s (who serves as a producer of the film) “Transformers” series.

This incarnation of the turtles is a little darker and grittier than what you’re used to but it does justice to the turtles themselves, preserving the characters and antics you know and love.

However, that doesn’t mean the movie equates to a quality production. “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” weaves thin characters through a flimsy story with some impressive CGI, motion capture and stunt coordination thrown in between.

The story begins with struggling reporter April O’Neil (Megan Fox) as she attempts to break out of “froth” news and into real hard-hitting journalism. She pursues a story about a militant gang terrorizing New York, The Foot Clan, and eventually discovers the existence of four vigilantes fighting back.

From there on the story drops any attempt at character arcs or dramatic themes beyond the turtles having to stop Shredder (Tohoru Masamune) because he’s generically evil.

To be fair, the opening’s attempt to build character didn’t really work that well anyways, other than to show us Megan Fox is probably better suited to be on “Good Morning America” than in action movies.

But again, to be fair, Fox isn’t bad. She has limited range as an actress but she delivers a solid performance with a few laughs along the way.

The bigger disappointment is Will Arnett. He tries exceptionally hard to make the script’s attempts at human comedy work and he fails completely. The dialogue and writing is so bad that he comes off as creepy rather than funny.

The human cast is rounded out by Whoopi Goldberg, who is in two scenes and serves no function in the story other than to embody the “no one believes the protagonist” cliché, and character actor William Fichtner, who, aside from some atrocious handling of a fire arm, gives the strongest performance.

But like “Transformers,” you didn’t show up to see the people. The turtles themselves are faithful adaptations and provide enough entertainment, through comedy and martial arts, to make the overall experience mildly enjoyable; although, the film forgoes real character development and simply manifests the turtles’ personalities in their wardrobes–Donatello’s tech-goggles, Leonardo’s armor, Michelangelo’s pooka shell necklace, etc.

Alan Ritchson and Megan Fox in “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”
Image via idlehands.blogslot.com

The new nostriled turtles take some getting used to, but overall the character designs and CGI production is fairly impressive. The motion capture work does a good job bringing the turtles to life, with Jeremy Howard and Alan Ritchson’s performances, as Donatello and Raphael, standing above the rest.

Noel Fisher is another highlight with his portrayal of Mikey. Though not a particularly nuanced performance, it’s apparent that the only effort the writers made was to make Mikey funny, and he is.

After those three there’s a pretty significant drop off. Leonardo and Splinter are about as bland as they can be, so much so that the studio brought Johnny Knoxville (Leonardo) and Tony Shalhoub (Splinter) in to voice over and breathe some life into the characters.

Speaking of Splinter, the CGI work to create a lifelike human/rat is impressive, and that is by no means a good thing. In short, Splinter is disgusting looking. He has a fun fight scene and Shalhoub’s voice work is enough to make the character bearable, but most audience members will cringe when he’s introduced.

But beyond the turtles, there really isn’t much going on in “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.” With plot holes and inconsistencies galore, the film makes little attempt to hide how paper thin it is, the most laughable example being Splinter learning enough ninjitsu to create the turtles from a picture book he found in the sewer.

It has impressive martial arts action and a few smart jokes poking fun at itself, but it essentially exists only to showcase Leo, Raph, Donnie and Mikey.

Director Jonathon Liebesman (“Battle Los Angeles,” “Wrath of the Titans”) produces what is probably his best work yet, though that isn’t saying much. Two positive things to say about him however is that he doesn’t work to be sexually exploitative of Megan Fox, like Michael Bay so obviously does, and his mountain chase sequence is pretty spectacular.

But all in all the final product seems pretty half-baked. Everything from the story to the new theme song and music video seems like it didn’t go beyond a rough draft.

To illustrate this point, listen to Wiz Khalifa, Juicy J, and Ty Dolla $ign perform “Shell Shocked” and tell me if it’s any better than the theme song to Nickelodeon’s “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” cartoon. Spoiler alert: it isn’t. Also, the cartoon’s theme essentially sums up the plot of the movie.

“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” is as pure a popcorn flick as there can be. It isn’t terrible, like many expected it to be, as there are enough redeeming qualities to make a decent piece of summer fun.

That being said, unless you’re a big fan of TMNT there is not much cause to pay $11.00 for a movie ticket. But apparently there’s enough fans out there to unseat “Guardians of the Galaxy” from the top spot and get a sequel green light. Go figure.

Honestly, your money is better spent seeing “Guardians” a second (or in my case, third) time.

Rating: 2/5 Stars

If you haven’t made up your mind yet, here’s the trailer:

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