Monday 13 October 2014

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - review

Technically, all the pieces are here, and in the right order. There are four teenagers. They are mutants. They are ninjas. Oh and of course they are turtles named Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael and Michaelangelo.

However something about the whole thing feels off and not like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles we all grew up with as kids.

Here the focus of the film is Megan Fox's Channel 6 reporter April O'Neill who (for some unknown reason) has become linked to the turtles past and was responsible for naming them and saving them from the lab where they were experimented on.

The turtles don't get a lot of screen time to showcase their brotherly bond and individual characteristics. Instead it is limited to Leonardo being the leader because everyone else calls him that. Donatello is the scientific, geeky one because he has glasses. Raphael is the angry one and Michaelangelo is the wise-cracking one who has a very weird and creepy interspecies crush on April. Eeeeewwwww.

Also shame on a movie that wastes talent like Will Arnett and William Fichtner, who has proved in the past that he can lift a bad movie like Drive Angry with his villainous performances.

The filmmakers have attempted to place this in a realistic New York City setting but for some reason, people seem far too willing to accept the appearance of 6ft talking mutant turtles. Perhaps they are normal compared to all the superheroes walking around the Big Apple.

Certainly the villain's evil plan of holding the city to ransom with a mutagen is straight out of a comic book movie (The Amazing Spider-Man in particular).

In the end it is a case of less T.U.R.T.L.E. Power and more "Awkward Turtle".

1 star

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