Michael Bay and Jonathan Liebesman’s take on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles isn’t a complete embarrassment to the franchise, mostly because it’s too silly a franchise to disrespect. Long time fans and kids who follow the newest (actually quite good) cartoon all seem to be in on the joke. It wasn’t created to be great art, and as much as I’ve enjoyed the franchise over the years, I don’t think it’s capable of being such.
That said, it’s definitely one of the more dumbed down Turtle incarnations. The dialogue is painfully stilted and leaves no room for the audience to think for itself, especially clear in one opening scene with the Shredder giving orders to his hench-daughter Karai. He calls for the use of innocent hostages as if it were on a mental checklist of “cliché villain deeds + groceries”. I don’t expect Tarantino level wordplay or as many ideas as a Woody Allen film in a TMNT adaption, but from what I could tell, Shredder and his financial underling Eric Sacks (William Fichtner, enjoying himself) basically do bad things because it’s fun to be naughty.
For a kids’ film, Ninja Turtles looks very ominous and garish. Every detail on the main characters is blown out of proportion. Shredder’s armor makes him look like a Rob Liefeld high school drawing, Splinter looks more alien-esque than rat-like, and while some of the newer accessories on the turtles are nice, their faces- much like Bay’s Transformers- are just too busy looking. I’m probably just spoiled by the simpler but much more effective (and actually, pretty cute looking) Nickelodeon designs, but at some point you have to put the pencil down.
I mean, look at them. They look like dolls.
One area where the movie works is staying true to the turtles’ personalities, but with a odd exception. Raphael is still a rebellious ass, Donatello is still a geek, Leonardo is still the disciplined one, and Michelangelo is still a fun loving surfer- only this time, he seems to be a bit of a pervert. He says some things to Megan Fox’s April O’ Neil that if New York actually knew he existed, Tumblr would be calling for his green head on a platter. Will Arnett’s Vernon is far braver than he was in the 1987 animated series, snarking through every scene he’s in and totally aware he’s in a goofy kid’s film.
Sadly, Whoopi Goldberg is also here looking like the crazy bag lady I see in my back alley. You were in The Color Purple, girl, you don’t need this Theodore Rex crap.
What then of the main draw to any Ninja Turtle revamp? The fights are your typical CGI fare, bodies and debris flying at the camera as it spins like Cesaro in a bad mood. It’s really obvious when they slide through sewer tunnels, in fact I was astonished by just how utterly fake the water around the boys looked.
So will you like it if you’re a long time turtle fan? I’d understand it if you didn’t, but like I said, you really can’t bastardize something that’s nigh impossible to take seriously in the first place. Prepare to see the Idiot Ball get passed around a lot, though, because there are a number of moments where the villains miss some golden opportunities to realize their plan and also where the turtles make their way out of a situation due to sheer dumb luck.
I’d brand it “entertainingly bad” and recommend it if you want a good laugh, but if you want TMNT material that you or your kids can really get invested in, I’d stick with the 1990 movie and the Nick show. Some of the old Archie paperbacks are good too, even if they tended to hammer the pro-environment message in a little hard.
Ok, more than a little hard.