Trailer:
“Together we will punish these freaks of nature…these turtles!”
It started as a violent graphic comic but over time has become one of the biggest children franchises, spreading from cartoon, to merchandising, to video games and finally live action films. Unfortunately the latter is the weakest of all of them.
Ninja Turtles first appeared in Mirage Comics back in 1984 but really rose in popularity with the arrival of the animated series in 87. The series re-imagined the franchise for a younger audience group and it sort of worked better as such. With kids all over the world tuning in, it was only a matter of time until a live action version went into the works.
The problem was that the technology really wasn’t there for creating realistic turtles that could believably perform martial arts. Because CGI had yet to establish itself, they had no choice but to rely on ridiculous costumes that were about on par with Howard the Duck’s. There is no way anyone over the age of 8 could even begin to imagine them as real turtles. Though it is somewhat impressive what stunts and flexibility they did manage to obtain with the costume, the fact still remained that the action scenes remained subpar and lackluster. This is as much a fault of bad technological limitations as it was poor choreography.
Don’t even get me started on Master Splinter. He might have been a better and more effective effect than his turtle students, but he still looked like he belonged in Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox.
Let’s get to the plot of this thing. The film opens with the city being plagued by a series of crimes. Not by mobsters, no, the greatest threat to this city is a bunch of pickpocket “ninja teenagers”. Gotham city this ain’t. The Ninja Turtles finally climb out of the sewers to save a news anchor by the name of April O’Neal (Judith Hoag). Their action manages to tick off the leader of “The Foot”, a samurai-like figure named Shredder. So begins a long tedious sting of events as Shredder kidnaps Splinter and attempts to apprehend the four turtles.
The four main protagonists are of course the title Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Raphael, Donatello, Leonardo, and Michelangelo. While I am most familiar with the 87 and 2003 animated series (and not so much the comic books), I do remember them each having their own clearly defined, fun loving personalities and characteristics. In the film they are all distilled down to annoying….well…teenagers. None of them have their own identities and just spit out one-liners and “hip” sayings. Now the TV series did similar but kept it a little more restrained and at least put some effort into injecting a little character to mix with the teenager clichés.
Even their human helpers April and the violent Casey Jones really don’t resonate either. They simply exist to make gogglie eyes at each other and amazed expressions at the turtles underwhelming stunts. They don’t serve much of a purpose besides being a vehicle for the audience to experience the events through. You’d think that a guy in a hockey mask, beating people down with bats is action gold, but I’ve never seen such boring action scene as the ones Jones is involved in. The simple fact is there isn’t one character in the entire film I care about….except for maybe Master Splinter.
Then there is the main villain of Shredder, one of the most badass figures of the cartoon world. Certainly they could not have gone wrong with him? Well he looks menacing enough in his classic costume but for the life of me I couldn’t figure out his motive. He has no big grand scheme or goal. He just wants to get rid of the turtles so his gang can go back to picking pockets in peace. In fact, his fight scene might be the most anticlimactic I have seen yet. In this film his Darth Vader-like menace is gone and he is just boring.
So what positive can I say about this film? Well when the turtles aren’t being just irritating some of their jokes are legitimately funny and cleverly written. It has the same great theme of teamwork and comradery, but besides that there isn’t much else to recommend or even like about it.
In the end its quality is that of a Power Rangers Movie, but what can you expect from the brilliant minds behind the Coneheads film. It’s corny, campy, and sporadic in the worst way. It’s action scenes are dull and poorly planned out. It’s a film you might be able to get into at the age of 8 but anyone over that will be less than amused.
FINAL RATING: 3/10- (30%)
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