Film Review - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014)

They're the world's most fearsome fighting team,
They're heroes in a half shell and they're green,
But when the Evil Shredder attacks,
These Turtle boys don't cut em no slack.

Going into this film I feared the worst I genuinely did as I was a big fan of the TMNT cartoon series as a kid in the early 90s (I even had one of the Roadshow Home Video releases of that series, Heroes in a Half Shell was the one I had) though the earlier films in live action weren't that great and the omens for this one weren't much better as it was produced by Michael Bay who pretty much gave us the film that never ends in Transformers: Age of Extinction recently then there was the design of the Turtles themselves and the rumours of them being space aliens (I began to call the film Teenage Mutant Zeist Turtles as a result) and finally Megan Fox as April O'Neill, could it become Cowabunga Dudes or a Cowa-Bungle.

Well it was more a case of the Cowa-Bummer as I just could not say this was a very good film and there are a number of reasons for this:

- The first is that the film changes the back-story of the characters quite significantly and I just sat there thinking as those scenes played out "THIS IS NOT HOW IT WENT" and it put me off a lot of the film as I began to not really care about the rest of the film which was pretty much a twisted loveless millionaire wanting to rule the world with the Turtles playing 2nd fiddle, gee that takes me back to the treatment of the Autobots in the Transformers movies then again what else to expect from Bay these days.

- The second is that the Turtles themselves look too bulky and their group dynamic just again didn't feel right, the Turtles in the animated series were a well trained fighting force that got on well as a team and each had a specific feel to them whereas they talk over each other a lot, have interchangeable characterizations and come across as very loud and as a result I didn't really enjoy watching them all that much save for Donatello who comes across as the most well realized of the four.

Splinter and Shredder meanwhile aren't as lucky, for starters neither of them are Japanese which leads back into the changes to the back-story made for this film which made me mad but what felt as bad if not a little bit worse is that Splinter is boring to watch and Shredder looks more like a cross between Megatron and Wolverine plus his voice is the same dark bass voice the Decepticons had the recent Transformers movies, I kept wishing Ken Watanabe was in this film but alas he wasn't.

- Third the action sequences in this film are so overproduced to the point where your head starts spinning as they have that very fast motion crossed with super slow motion and heavy bass on the sound mix and like in Transformers it takes you out of the action and it becomes less exciting to watch.

- And lastly Fox is a complete blank as April and it only seems like she was cast as a fence mending measure by Bay following her comments about him which saw her fired from the Transformers series, I have thought for a long while now that Anne Hathaway would be a great April O'Neill but it's doubtful she would've done it but Fox doesn't even bring anything to the role and give the large focus she has in the film it gets very tiring very quickly.

But there was one bright light in this film (strange to read I know) and that was Will Arnett who tries at least to do something with his role and doesn't always succeed but at least he is trying and has some fun in that Bill Paxton esque way, it's just a pity given his stellar voice work as Batman in the Lego Movie that he isn't used better here.

And yet it didn't have to be this way, the path forward for a Ninja Turtles film for me could not be more clear: You make it fun and light hearted, make Shredder and the Foot Clan the villains, let the Turtles be central to the story and let them play off each other like they did in the cartoon series and you'll have a winner on your hands but instead we get this mediocre trash and it makes me feel very sad saying it.

So all in all, this Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reboot is not that great and I just cannot recommend it, it's always a sad feeling when your gut instinct is realized and you just feel horrible afterwards, 1 out of 5.