Review of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014) by Garr — 08 Aug 2014

I watched the new Ninja Turtles movie so that you don't have to. In the animated series, Splinter is a really cool character. He used to be Hamato Yoshi, he was a martial arts master, and was betrayed by Shredder.

In this new one, he's just a lab rat who found a Karate book in a storm drain. There are no characters in this movie, so I didn't care what happened to any of them. The turtles aren't introduced until a 3rd of the way into the film.

That strategy worked brilliantly in Godzilla because he's a monster. Here it doesn't work because they should be the heroes of the film. And here it doesn't even matter that they know ninjutsu because they're all giant, bullet proof, hulking monsters.

Will Arnett's character, Michelangelo, and one scene in an elevator are funny; the rest of this movie is way too serious. And the whole time the music score tells you bombastically that everything you are seeing is just as amazing as a transformer.

Go see Guardians of the Galaxy. It actually has characters, and wit, and charm. I'm not super surprised. I wasn't sure what to expect. I was hoping to enjoy it. I wasn't expecting high art, but I was disappointed that it was wasn't even as good as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III (1993).