Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Movie Review: "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" (2014)

Movie"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles"
Director: Jonathan Liebesman
Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 1 hour, 41 minutes
Image Source
April O'Neil (Megan Fox) is an unappreciated field reporter stuck doing fluff pieces. Trying to gain respect, she investigates a recent wave of crime that has hit New York City at the hands of the Foot Clan. One night while witnessing a robbery, she catches a glimpse of a masked vigilante who puts a stop to the Foot Clan's stealing, leaving behind a symbol written on a wall that she thinks she has seen in the past. Upon further investigation, she discovers that these vigilantes are giant mutant ninja turtles that were developed in her father's lab many years ago, along with his partner Eric Sacks (William Fichtner). She must help the turtles combat the Foot Clan and end Shredder's reign of terror.

NOPE.

Let's start off simple. Michael Bay, Paramount, and Viacom have managed to take our beloved childhood memories of what the Ninja Turtles/Transformers/G.I. Joe used to be and has systematically destroyed them. They continue to do this because they think it will make them money by updating the classic nostalgia of our youth. By doing this, though, they are really just preying on the hopes of the children of the 80's and early 90's, and that some day, someone could make a good live-action version of their favorite old cartoons. Why has it become acceptable for these filmmakers to take our good, solid, perfectly fine without a reboot memories and shit all over them??? This is what they have managed to do, yet again.

We had pretty low expectations going into this movie from what we had seen based on casting choices and subsequent trailers. But, being the open-minded movie goers that we are, we went in willing to have our minds changed, if it was possible. It even failed to reach the very low bar we had set.

First off, Megan Fox is horrible waste of acting space. Not just in this, but in anything. She's so fucking terrible, so how does she keep getting gigs? Her vapid existence and lifeless expressions coupled with her over-colleginated lips and continuous tight shots of them and her plastic face made for a very unpleasant experience. This wasn't the worst of it, though. So much of the movie is focused on her character, April O'Neil, instead of the turtles. I'm sorry, but is this movie called "Middle-Aged-Lifeless-Super-Mouth-Breather"? NO, IT'S CALLED TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA FUCKING TURTLES. There's hardly a scene without her! On top of all this, April O'Neil from the 1990's TMNT film, as well as the animated series, was a very well respected, top lead reporter. In this piece of drivel, she is reduced to doing stories about yoga, which feature her bouncing around on trampolines because obviously it's what women do, "froth" pieces is what Will Arnett's character Vern calls them. She's nowhere near respected in her job and her boss, played inexplicably by Whoopi Goldberg, seems to hate her for no apparent reason. She's never taken seriously or given the respect she's clearly trying to achieve. She saw a crime in progress and that it was stopped by a masked vigilante and apparently that wasn't news...news outlets report on less than that every single day.

From lazy fart jokes to gaping plot holes, the script is total trash. The turtle's origin story is completely changed and decimated for no good reason other than to make some phony, unnecessary connection to April O'Neil's character. And yet, somehow, she couldn't remember her pets names? BigJ and I cataloged our entire pet history, name and all, so obviously she's just stupid. People have been saying that they don't mind this change in the origin story line, well, we do. It sucks, and it doesn't make any sense and doesn't need to be added or changed in order to tell the story. The Foot Clan is reduced from silent, "in the shadows" underground ninjas to gun-wielding thugs in glorified SWAT uniforms, shooting anyone in sight and taking everything they can with brute force. And while we're on the subject of ninjas, pretty much most of the connection to the martial arts way of life from the origin story is glossed over with some cheap back story having to do with Sack's childhood with Shredder in Japan. Oh, and Splinter found a book about martial arts on the floor of the sewer, so he randomly decided to start training it one day! WOW, what a story! He also completely adopted the Asian culture along with it, too. Also, what's the overly moist look Splinter displays throughout the entire film? If it was done intentionally to make him more sewer-like, they failed as they only managed to make him look like a creepy uncle who lives in a basement and stalks children. And speaking of Shredder, is he going to be featured in the next "Transformers" movie? Because it looked like he walked off of the set of it with his glossy metallic robo-suit of armor and flying knives and wolverine claws. About the title characters, BigJ says he didn't mind the way the turtles looked, but I take huge issue with that. They look like gigantic green turds with nostrils...why the hell do they have such huge nostrils?!?! Will Arnett's character Vern is just a creeptastic douchebag, but then again, it's Will Arnett. He basically plays himself playing Gob Bluth in everything where he's ever cast. Only this time, he creepily hits on Megan Fox the entire time. None of these characters are compelling whatsoever and they are just vacant and vacuous former shells (GET IT?!??!) of who they used to be.

Instead of using any imagination whatsoever, Jonathan Liebesman has manage to completely obliterate some of our favorite characters that we had as kids and Michael Bay, no doubt, had a heavy hand in this as well (since it has his stink written all over it, IE: unnecessary product placement, random explosions, etc). Liebesman can add another crapfest to his already awful resume. They were obviously not devoted to this movie, in fact, I don't know if they even watched any of the source material at all. They didn't need to since they crapped all over it, anyways. Please, do us a favor and save your money and your sanity if you're a child of the 80's or 90's. This is an empty waste of cinematic space that could have had so much potential if only a better director and producer were attached to it. It's unoriginal, and brutal to watch everything we love be torn to shreds (GET IT??!?!?!).

My Rating: 2/10
BigJ's Rating: 2.5/10
IMDB's Rating: 5.9/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 19%
Do we recommend this movie: AVOID LIKE THE PLAGUE!!!
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One year ago, we were watching"Red"

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