Instead of bringing back some beloved childhood characters from the late 80’s and early 90’s the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie is more like “The Return of Megan Fox”.
This is very unfortunate as she was not missed. After a very public feud with TMNT producer and Transformers regurgitator Michael “Go Big or Go Bigger” Bay, Miss Fox was seemingly exiled from Hollywood. Removed from the rotating roster of “hot” young actresses and the world moved on without much of a protest.
Somehow the feud has ended. I imagine Miss Fox must have had to ask The Bay for penance. Perhaps there an bizarre and unholy sexual act performed that evokes the inexplicable nature of a H.P. Lovecraft creature. Words cannot not define the unnamable deeds that must have gone on for Miss Fox to fall back into The Bay’s good graces. But she has. And we have to endure.
There is a lot of Megan Fox in this movie. This brings to light two things:
- She cannot and should not carry a movie.
- This is a missed opportunity that does not capture any of the fun and essence of source material. This movie does not need an April O’Neal back story. It needs turtles practicing the ancient martial art of Ninjitsu.
There isn’t much joy in this film. As with the Michael Bay reboots of horror films (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Amityville Horror, The Hitcher, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street) there is no sense of excitement of re-introducing these stories. You don’t feel that the filmmakers care that they “get to” take a pass at something that people have nostalgia for, say the way Zack Snyder did with his take on Dawn of the Dead. It’s more like you are witnessing an easy “cash in” where you don’ t have to go through that boring part of the filmmaking process where you have to come up with what the movie is going to be about.
TMNT takes its time getting going, spending the entire first act focusing on struggling investigative reporter April O’Neal (Fox). She has a mis-cast Will Arnett following her around trying to act as the comic relief. Arnett can be a very funny man (See Arrested Development and his Lego version of Batman as examples) but he lends nothing here.
Once the turtles do show up, they are somewhat of a disappointment. Their look didn’t bother me although they have angles where they are more creepy than kid-friendly. Michelangelo hits the mark with his obnoxious, teenage energy but the rest are pretty bland. They are much more Mutant than ever before; big, bullet proof, brutes that have superhuman strength. I don’t know how I feel about the nostrils. I was aware of them frequently. I did make note of that.
The biggest misstep is that they turned the evil villain Shredder into a Transformer!!! He wears robotic armor that makes him look like a distant cousin to a Decepticon and it is just stupid. That’s the word. Stupid. Throw in many pointless shots revealing the action in Bay-stamped with approval- style slow motion and you have yourself a version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that plays like a Transformers rip-off.
On a positive note: There is one pretty cool sequence involving a semi-truck sliding down the side of a snow covered mountain that is both exciting and ridiculous at the same time. The film needed more of that. It also needed to ease up on the Pizza commercial element (brought to you by Pizza Hut) and spend more time capturing the silly premise of giant ninja turtles that live in the sewers of New York.
End result: I miss the Muppet version.