Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Review Tuesday: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles [2014]

The reboot that no one requested came to the silver screen this year....


Teenage Mutant
Ninja
Turtles
When a violent gang is responsible for a crime wave in New York City, a reporter stumbles across the conspiracy involved and the extraordinary mutant vigilantes doing something about it.
Michael Bay is well known for action movies with lots of explosions and no soul. Some people hate him for ruining franchises from their childhood, so the outcry around TMNT came fast and furious. The rumor mill was busy pouring out mis-information by the gallon. The turtle are aliens? The turtles have lips? They look like Shrek without the ears! Possibly the biggest gripe people had was with Megan Fox as April O'Neil. 

Well, Megan did a fine job and looked extraordinarily hot as April O'Neil. They added a little color to her hair to make it more auburn and a yellow jacket and that was fine for me. 

More importantly, the turtles looked AWESOME.

In case you were confused:
  • Blue: Leonardo (Leo) - the leader with swords
  • Red: Rafael (Raph) - the tough guy with sais
  • Orange: Michelangelo (Mike or Mikey) - the free spirit with nunchakus
  • Purple: Donatello (Don or Donnie) - the tech guy with the bo staff
I kinda felt like they overdid Donatello with the gizmos, but other than that they did a great job with the turtles. They did look like giant mutated red ear sliders. Even the shells had effective markings. Well done on that! Plus the personalities were properly captured.

The story was rather simple. A crime boss has bigger ambitions for world domination and the turtles intend to stand in his way. Willian Fichtner was brilliant as the villain Eric Sachs. The Shredder looked more like the Silver Samurai from the most recent Wolverine movie, but that didn't hurt the story. In fact, it was pretty bad-ass. The turtles were great, in ways toned down, but all the elements you know and love about TMNT were there. Even pizza love and COWABUNGA

The only aspect I didn't care for was Will Arnett's character as cameraman Vernon Fenwick. His attraction to April O'Neil was a little bit amusing, but the rest of the character was pretty worthless. Jeez, I can't actually think of anything that I've actually liked that guy in. Hmm. THAT'S funny.   

As a whole, I'd say that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles delivers nearly two hours of good TURTLE POWER. Fun and entertaining. Worth watching, and maybe you should (if you haven't) since the studio already got cleared for a sequel. And you get a nice view of Megan Fox's fine ass. Well worth the price of admission. 
 

On IMDB
On Amazon

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