With a three year old and my own childhood nostalgia, you can imagine my interest in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was fairly high. Between watching the new Nickelodeon cartoon and collecting the associated toys – for my son, I swear – my curiosity about the new movie got the better of me. It didn’t hurt that Megan Fox was in it as well. Warning: Spoilers below.
However, I should have known better based on the previews alone. There was not a single redeeming factor in this movie. I tried to find one folks, truly. The turtles were bad – The CGI, while appears incredibly detailed, did not feel real. The uncanny valley feeling just didn’t draw me in the same way the suits did from the original movies. Aside from Donatello’s tech covered outfit, none of the Turtles designs felt right, Everything felt forced – from Leonardo’s samurai ‘armor’ to Michelangelo’s surfer getup. I wont even mention Raphael. While I am a fan of Johnny Knoxville, he was not the right fit as Leo’s voice actor, and honestly none of them cut it in my opinion.
Shredder, which I remember being a big kerfuffle, turned out to actually be Oroko Saki and not an old white guy. Unfortunately he plays a minor role in the movie outside of donning a ridiculous suit of bladed robot armor that shot knives at the turtles, which magically returned back to the suit only to be shot out again. Splinter is probably the biggest disappointment of the movie, however. He looks absolutely offensive, with a top knot and Fu Manchu, fueling forward the forced cliche character design.
Will Arnett, who I love in everything ever, played April O’Niel’s sad sack camera man Vern Fenwick. He spends the entire movie pining over Megan Fox (I don’t blame him) but she doesn’t acknowledge it once. I couldn’t tell if it was Fox’s deadpan acting or if they intentionally wrote him off as April’s friend-zoned free ride about town, which is the only reason he ever shows up.
The story consisted of April’s scientist father dying in a fire when he learned that his coworker Eric Sacks (old white guy in love with Shredder) was using the mutagen for evil purposes. Young April rescued her lab ‘pet’ turtles and rat from the fire, releasing them into the sewer – Why would she abandon her pets in the sewer?! She comes to the realization years later after encountering the turtles that they were experimented on by the mutagen, all of which was lost in the fire. She then goes to Eric Sacks looking for information about her father’s experiments only to lead him and robot Shredder straight to them. At this point we learn that their whole motivation is to release poison into New York City via his skyscraper, only to charge the government for the mutagen cure. Sacks is already rich and powerful at the start of the movie, what is the point??
Quickly running through my remaining complaints; Foot Soldiers are basically clumsy black op mercenaries instead of ninjas, Megan Fox remains fully clothed the entire time, Oh yeah, and Whoopie Goldberg plays April’s overacting new’s reporter boss. TERRIBLE.
Most egregious of all however was that the new Turtle Van, which they released a pretty solid toy of, had maybe three minutes of play time at the ass end of the movie. During which Mikey, the lovable scamp he is, presses the wrong button in an attempt to show off the bass power of the van and instead blows up sad sack Vern’s brand new car. Where the hell was the van?!
Bottom line: Do not see this movie. If you need a Turtle fix, watch the current Nickelodeon Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon. It has fantastic story lines, great voice acting, and origin stories that don’t make me want to rake my brain with a fork. It even has a sweet van that gets more than three minutes of TV time!