Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - Review

So – Michael ‘Transformers’ Bay, king of ridiculous film franchises has got his hands on another one in ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’. “Oh Jesus,” I thought, “this is going to suck”. However, perhaps from Bay taking a producing credit and Jonathan Liebesman directing, it defeated my expectations – if not by a lot.

I’m not going to lie - I’m not a TMNT superfan. I haven’t read the comics or watched the cartoon. However, I have enough sense to work out that the turtle’s sensei, a mutant rat named Splinter - did not teach the title characters ninjutsu from a book.

The new origins story, written for the movie, is lazy; as is the rest of the script. And Shredder, the turtle’s prestigious arch enemy, just looks like a downsized, less-extravagant transformer. With Shredder, it’s not the armour that’s scary; it’s what’s behind it. I understood, that William Fichtner – a very capable actor – was playing Shredder, and that would have been great! But he actually played an underdeveloped, dull, not-very-scary sub-villain.

It’s not just Fichtner who plays a dull character, the rest of the humans are dreary as well. I mean, who’s interested in whether Will Arnett can bang Megan Fox? Really, guys, really?

However, with a sequel already green-lit, they can fix all of this pretty easily by the time TMNT 2 comes out in 2016.

Maybe I’m being too harsh – I mean, they did get some things right. The turtles themselves are fantastic. From the trailer they just looked like big, ugly, wrinkly, fat, green blobs but they actually, in the film, they come across really funny and are the best part of the movie. Let’s forget the monstrosity of the Vanilla Ice turtle rap from 1990’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze. The best part of this movie is the musical sequence - It’s very enjoyable!

TMNT has got everything you’d expect from a movie involving Michael Bay: a terrible script, shameless product placement (Skype, Pizza Hut etc.) and, of course, EXPLOSIONS!!! I mean, let’s face it, this film is stupid – but maybe that’s what you want from a movie about big, green turtles; who are martial arts experts; and adore pizza. But, this could have been so much better, and overall this is a major disappointment.

2/5