Review of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014) by Stako — 21 Aug 2014

Today was the first showing of this movie for Bulgaria, and ofcourse, most of my friends went along with me to see it. I was even dressed up as Casey Jones, and my beautiful girlfriend was my lovely April O'Neil, so it became a "thing" - something to expect. The first TMNT movie in a long time. In other words - we were excited, even knowing that it won't be good. We just wanted it to be OK.

Well, it wasn't.

I really don't want to say this, but this movie is terrible. If you have even a little bit of logical and critical thinking, you will see that.

Director Jonathan Liebesman, known for nothing even remotely good, did a semi-terrible job. A few scenes pop up and will be remembered for a while as exciting or cool, but nothing more. Josh Appelbaum did a particularly terrible job writing the script, it simply gave nothing for the actors to work with, it was very simple, and most jokes weren't worth more than a chuckle. A lot of people are saying the turtles ARE the turtles when they "get it on" - I strongly disagree, having read most of the original and IDW comics, and watched most of the TV series, I know how the turtles act, and this were not the turtles. The Turtles are a lot more charming than simply a nerd, a nobody, a loverboy and a grumpy guy with an attitude. Mr. Wolf said it best: the fact that you are a character does not mean you have character, and this is just the case with this rendition of our favorite heroes.

Further more, the story is very badly paced, it was one of those movies that feels very fast and very slow all at once - there were no moments of gradual suspense, nothing of value at all. You only need to see how weak the intro is to get what I mean, and the ending is even worse (it doesn't have a finale, it just ends in a typical Michael Bay fashion). And - spoilers - about the supposed climax, though cool at times, I agree with some critics that it was too similar to the one in Amazing Spider-Man 1. Other than that, the geek in me wants to say that this movie has the same problems as the original TMNT 2, though I will not point-out which, so not to spoil.

When it comes to acting, I can only say two things. First - William Fichtner was the only one of all the cast who was doing actual acting. Even though he was given 0 good text to work with, he had every scene he was in in complete control, as you'd expect. Everyone else was simply there, trying to do acting, rather than acting. The other thing I want to note, although it's not really acting related - the Shredder is much more cooler looking on screen. Sure, the Victorynox effects are obvious, but he is a lot less bulky and a bit more bad ass than he seems to be, so at least I'm glad about that. Oh, and Megan Fox did try though, for like 2 minutes.

The movie sounds ok, it's the typical Michael Bay style sound work - a lot of slow-mo dubstepish sounds and a lot of metal scraping noises, and a soundtrack worth 2 hours and a synth - nothing of value. The theme song by Wiz Khalifa and his entourage of various rappers is catchy, but notably weak and stupid. Even more so than Ninja Rap, and that's a whole new level of stupid only 2014's rappers can offer.

The post-production work was terrible - it was obvious how the movie went through a lot of stages, it was obvious how Sacks was going to be Shredder before the fan outrage, a lot of scenes have no sense what so ever, but nothing can be done about that.

The movie is pretty damn weak. And if you can't stand stand being not-critical or logical, you are not going to like it at all. (Yeah, it is scary how this movie surpassed Guardians of the Galaxy and Planet of the Apes.).

However, if you have kids - take 'em to see it. Kids love this movie. And ultimately... this movie, in particular, is obviously made for them. It wants to take you on a joy ride, and if you are a little kid, not knowing most of the history of TMNT (like, per say, me), you will have a blast and go want a toy afterwards. Hell, even I wanted a toy afterwards. But that's what comic book movies do to you I guess.

The movie is not as terrible as some people point it out to be, but it is pretty weak, Kids will love it, real fans will probably hate it, but be excited by it. Either way, a sequel is already due and with Bibop and Rocksteady confirmed for it, maybe we will see something a tad more faithful, and let's hope - better.