Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is what it is

Let’s get this out of the way right from the start: I am the best/worst person to review Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I have absolutely zero deep-seated childhood connection, adoration or knowledge of the “Heroes on the Half Shell,” so my review of the movie will simply be about the movie and not how it bastardizes the memories from my childhood.

Now, with that out of the way let’s have a look at Michael Bay’s production of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. In the movie, a gang known as the Foot Clan is terrorizing New York City. TV news reporter April O’Neil (Megan Fox), better known for her fluff pieces, is trying to break into real journalism by exposing the Foot Clan. During one major heist, she sees some kind of vigilante but no one believes her.

After another attack, she sees there are four vigilantes and … they’re turtles! Six foot tall, sword-wielding turtles. That can talk too. And it turns out, she knows who they are and where they came from. It’s then up to April to protect their identities while they attempt to stop the Foot Clan, but someone else who knows of the experiments that created the ninja turtles is working with the evil Shredder to poison the city and then provide an antidote for big bucks. Cue ninja turtle action.

I was concerned that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was going to be impossibly corny, what with all of the snappy one-liners, but they were only mildly annoying. I guess that’s part of the classic characters’ schtick. What did surprise me was the level of intensity and violence in the first half of the movie (which gave way to more silliness and over-the-top action as the film progressed). There is quite a lot of gun-play with the Foot Clan, and they even take and threaten to kill hostages in a subway station. It is a bit intense for a younger crowd.

The turtles themselves are very realistically rendered motion capture CGI characters that hold up convincingly well even in the extreme close-ups. Their sensei Splinter, a genetically enhanced rat, is a little more cartoony but the voice work of Tony Shalhoub brings some humanity to him, especially when things start looking extremely bad for our heroes. The film’s villain, Shredder, is getting the brunt of the criticism from hardcore Turtles fan who say he looks more like a Transformer. I didn’t see that at all, but the fact that he can shoot blades from his gauntlets and magnetically retrieve them have sent devotees into a tizzy. To me, he looks like the ninja from Brazil, just a bit shinier.

The film’s human cast do what they can to compete with the film’s CGI stars. The return of Megan Fox to the Michael Bay fold may be surprising, but the fact that her acting is beyond flat really isn’t. Yeah, she’s gorgeous but I just don’t get her acting appeal. I actually thought she was better in the Transformers movies. Will Arnett does bring some snarky humor to the role of cameraman Vernon Fenwick, and William Fichtner plays the bad guy as only he can. Unfortunately, you kind of know right from the beginning that he’s got something up his sleeve, so his transformation from friend to foe isn’t all that surprising.

Director Jonathan Liebesman (Wrath of the Titans, Battle Los Angeles) keeps the film rolling at a frantic pace, making each action segment bigger than the next — a segment involving several vehicles, people and turtles careening down a snow-covered mountainside is an over-the-top highlight — and really employs the 3D format to its best advantage. The script does a good job of introducing the characters to the uninitiated, but apparently plays fast and loose with what has come before. It is what it is.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was never going to be a movie that made anyone happy for several reasons (mainly because it has Michael Bay’s name on it) but I’m going to go out on a limb here and admit that I had a good time watching it, even as I rolled my eyes at some of the more outrageous action and almost cartoony at times CGI. I was entertained because I had no preconceived notions of what the characters were supposed to be. Your enjoyment will mostly depend on how protective you are about these characters and your tolerance for Michael Bay-style action, but if you’re going in blind you just may find yourself saying “cowabunga” and having a good time.