So I watched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles…
Honestly I went into this movie with low expectations. There had been so much bad hype around this movie from the design of the turtles, to William Fichtner possibly playing shredder and obviously Michael Bay and Megan Fox’s involvement. But honestly, I really liked this movie.
Basic plot: four turtles are mutated into giant, 7 foot, steroid popping, durag wearing, gym crazy ninjas while Megan Fox acts badly around them.
I haven’t come to expect much from Fox as an actress but she managed to reach a whole new low in this movie. Megan Fox is not believable as anything but eye candy. She tries to be funny, she fails. She tries to make you believe she’s a hard working, ace reporter; she fails. She tries to convince you she’s a functioning human being, SHE FAILS. There are a lot of young actresses who could have brought this role to life but Fox isn’t one of them. Honestly, an apple on a broom with a face drawn on it would have been a better casting choice.
Actually, with the exception of Will Arnett, most of the acting in this movie is horrible. Whoopi Goldberg has a little cameo in this movie that is so bland and banal that I’m sure the Academy is going to demand that she returns her Oscar.
But this movie isn’t all bad, everything good about this movie happens whenever The Turtles – particularly Michaelangelo and Raphael – are on screen. The screenwriters and director did a really great job creating a sense of sibling comradary between the turtles. They tease each other, they fight, they reference things only brothers would know. The relationship is really well done.
The action scenes weren’t worth writing home about. They were unimaginative and didn’t excite me at all. The one thing I liked was that you could actually see what was happening in the fight scenes (Michael Bay PLEASE take note of this skill when you’re busying editing the fight scenes for the next Transformers movie you plan on ruining).
The thing that surprised me about this movie was the length. A movie being two hours isn’t as uncommon as it was maybe 7 or 8 years ago. Most movies abuse this and this leads to movies that feel overly long (yes, Transformers: Age of Extinction, I’m looking at you) but this movie is only an hour and a half long. Now this might sound like a plus but I think this movie could have done with an extra 20 minutes just so they could have expanded on a few plot points and develop characters like Shredder. Shredder kicks a lot of ass in this movie (which I LOVED) but he isn’t menacing at all and how he loses is so pathetic – he needs to sit down in a shower, clutch his knees and ugly cry as he thinks about how he was defeated in this flick.
I know everyone was haggling on about how The Turtles looked and how Raphael looks like he’s being injecting more steroids than Lance Armstrong but I feel like we should have been talking about how disgusting Splinter looks. I know he’s a rat but holy hell does he need to look like he has syphillis with a side of cancer? Seriously can we please redesign Splinter?
Overall this movie was better than I expected. I feel like it was aimed at a younger audience and it was trying to create a whole new generation of Turtle crazy fans which is good. It lacks in key areas though and Megan Fox really drags this movie down. It’s worth a trip to the cinema, take a date so you guys can make out anytime Megan Fox speaks. 6/10