Runtime: 1 hour, 41 minutes
Rating: PG-13
Director: Jonathan Liebesman
Quick Impressions:
I grew up watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I remember when the first movie came out, the excitement over Corey Feldman voicing Donatello, and the popularity of the infectious “Turtle Power” rap. (Random snatches of it still pop into my head from time, as a matter of fact. Stuff like, “We need heroes like the Lone Ranger/ when Tonto came pronto when there was danger./ They didn’t say they’d be there in half an hour/ ‘cause they displayed Turtle Power!”)
What a really liked, though, was the 80s-90s cartoon series. I remember watching it a lot when I was in sixth grade and liking Raphael and Michelangelo far better than the others because together they provided all the best jokes. (I learned the word Zamboni from the episode where they’re on an ice rink and yell, “Oh no! It’s the Zamboni machine!” and Michelangelo screams in panic, “No it’s not, dude! It’s the thing that smoothes out the ice!”)
I watched the first two movies for sure, and my husband and I even took my stepson to see the slightly flat 2007 TMNT animated film. (There was so much voice talent in that movie, but still it never really popped.)
Thanks to my familiarity with Michael Bay movies, I expected nothing (i.e., nothing good) from this new incarnation, but my five-year-old daughter has been very excited to see it all summer. Every time we go to a movie, she declares, “I want to see the one with those turtles.” It came out the night before we left for a week-long family road trip to Disneyland, so we waited until we came back to check in with the four heroes in a half shell. And to my surprise, the movie wasn’t actually half bad.
My daughter also enjoyed the eclectic, TMNT-nostalgia themed preshow so much that she has decided that she would prefer to see all movies at the Alamo Drafthouse from now on. At several moments, she turned to me and squealed in delight, “This is so awesome! Right?” (At one point near the end of the feature, however, she did turn to me and whisper, “Movies last a long time here! No wonder you guys always come home so late!”)
The Good:
This is much better than the 2007 effort TMNT. Since we waited so long to see the movie, I’ve heard plenty of bad word of mouth by now.
But I have to disagree with this film’s harshest critics. Yes, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is slow starting and not particularly clever, but it’s a pretty well made little children’s movie, much more coherent and focused than what I was expecting.
Maybe the naysayers are not accepting this film for what it is. I can understand that because surely the audience is filled with nostalgic Ninja Turtles fans from way back, hoping for a clever new take on a treasured childhood memory. This movie definitely fails to deliver that. It’s not edgy or tongue-in-cheek or witty or wise or mature.
But it is good for kids. If you’re hoping to introduce an elementary school aged child to the wonderful world of Ninja Turtles for the first time, then you’ve come to the right movie.
For some reason, I’ve seen a lot of Michael Bay movies, so I honestly did not expect anything this coherent (in terms of story) from one of his projects. Then again, Michael Bay isn’t the director here. (It’s Jonathan Liebesman.) That’s probably why the film isn’t particularly loud and unfocused. It’s also not as aggressively sexist, blatantly misogynist, and hyper-sexually obnoxious as what I’ve come to expect from Michael Bay. To my pleasant surprise, in fact, this Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is relatively earnest and (at times) somewhat charming.
My five-year-old loved it. There’s a “twist” early on involving the true nature one of the characters. I’m throwing up those quotes because surely no adult who has ever seen a movie before will actually consider this “revelation” a plot twist. It’s completely obvious from the beginning that the film plans to make this move—completely obvious to everyone except little children.
As I was thinking to myself, I hope the movie doesn’t intend this to be a clever twist, my daughter delighted me by gasping in absolute shock and horror.
She then turned and whispered to me, “Can you believe it? This is terrible!”
She remained actively engaged through the entire movie and afterwards remarked that she particularly liked “the yellow one.” (This led to an argument in the parking lot. I maintained that Michelangelo wears, and has always worn, an orange mask, but my daughter thought it looked yellow in this movie, and my husband agreed with her. He said he remembered it being yellow in the cartoons. I’m almost positive it was orange in the cartoons I saw, but maybe there were different cartoons?) Anyway, my daughter really liked Michelangelo.
That’s another thing this movie does really well. It clearly distinguishes between the Turtles, giving them all distinctive voices and personalities that matched up well with my childhood memories. (That was a big downfall of the 2007 version. It made most of the Turtles far too vague.) (Now I personally prefer the somewhat less intense and more wisecracking Raphael of the cartoon series, but I understand why they went with a scarier, moodier, angrier Raphael here since he’s been portrayed that way in most of the movie projects.)
The dynamic among the Turtles seems just about right. And I actually love the backstory that this movie provides. It’s the kind of thing that really appeals to little kids. My daughter and several other children in the theater were thoroughly charmed by the flashback scenes.
Megan Fox makes a pretty good April O’Neil, too. I’m glad to see her working (in a prominent project) again, and to be honest I was stunned that she’s allowed such a demure self-presentation this time. In Transformers, they objectified her so much it was like she was in the zoo. Plus Mikaela had a feisty, almost brassy manner completely absent in April O’Neil. Fox portrays her with such a sweet innocence that she sometimes seems like an extra in Annie. (Well actually, those orphans were all a lot tougher than April.) The downside, of course, is that she is often a bit boring. But she still manages to look fresh-faced and pretty in a shockingly wholesome way. Seriously, she dresses so modestly you almost can’t tell it’s the same Megan Fox from Transformers.
Now, granted, there is one really weird moment where she’s leaning out the window and Will Arnett has a prime view of her butt, but even then, said butt is completely covered in jeans, and it’s hard to tell if Arnett is staring because her big butt is sexy or because he’s baffled by the way she’s thrown herself out the window. (I’m pretty sure the character is supposed to be leering at her, but Arnett’s portrayal lends ambiguity to the already weird scene.)
And that scene is the one exception that makes us pointedly aware of how little we’re invited to ogle Megan Fox’s flesh in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. She is really the opposite of all-sexed-up here. It’s like she’s Maria von Trapp and just left the convent (where she doesn’t fit in because she’s just such a daydreamer). Michelangelo does have a huge crush on her, but he’s presented as such a young goofball that his persistent pursuit never really seems threatening or offensive.
Whoopi Goldberg is pretty good in a supporting role. (I’m really curious about the casting process for this movie. It has quite an unexpected cast.) SNL alum Abby Elliot is really funny in a minor role (especially given what she has to work with), and speaking of SNL alums, Taran Killam is in this movie, too, though I really have no idea why. (I like Killam, and I’m not knocking his performance, but I think he’s only in one scene, and he barely says or does anything. So maybe he’s a huge TMNT fan, or maybe other scenes were cut, or maybe his character will return in a sequel?)
While I was on the lookout for a Best Scene Visually, I kept noticing the photogenic amazingness of William Fichtner’s face. I kept thinking, That face was created for cameras. Any scene that features a close up of his face looks stunning. You can’t frame that face wrong. He’s almost as photogenic as the bad guy in the Lone Ranger, and then I remembered, Wait, that was also William Fichtner. If I ever get obscenely rich, I’m going to throw a huge party and hire William Fichtner to make faces in a well-lit corner of the room.
Best Scene:
I love that flashback when we learn the origin of the Turtles and see how they escaped from the research lab. (I wasn’t crazy about the way Splinter finds the little flipbook. That seemed hard to believe to me, but then I had to remind myself that I was watching the story of how a rat adopted four mutant turtle brothers and trained them to be ninjas.)
This explanation of the Turtles’ origin makes April’s involvement with them and loyalty to them much easier to accept.
Having heard nothing but bad things about this movie, I was expecting tons of pointless action, so I was quite pleasantly surprised to get such a long, elaborate sequence focused exclusively on story-building.
Best Scene Visually/ Scene Most Likely to Outlast the Movie:
The short bit with the four turtles in the elevator is pretty great. For one thing, it captures the breezy humor I remember from the Ninja Turtles projects of my childhood. For another, it serves as a great refresher course for audience members who can’t remember which brother carries which weapon. It’s very simple, but I think it works, short but sweet.
Best Action Sequence:
Probably my favorite scene in the entire movie is the downhill truck chase/escape/fight in the snow. It seems destined to be replicated in a Ninja Turtles video game and reminded me fondly of both Mario and Sonic at the Winter Olympics and the actual Winter Olympics.
It’s the rare action sequence that I enjoy watching, and I liked this a lot. (I guess, in general, I prefer chases to explosions.) Yes, yes, at least half of the things that happen on this remarkable downhill adventure probably defy the laws of physics, but I’ll bet they also look great in 3D. (We only rarely spring for the glasses which my daughter is not crazy about wearing, so I guess I’ll never know.)
The movie really takes a while to find its legs, but at this point, it’s definitely firing on all cylinders. Put another way, during this scene, the movie is finally up to speed and as good as it’s ever going to get.
Best Inside Joke:
My husband and I really could not believe it as we watched Will Arnett’s character nonchalantly prepare himself a Parmesan and mustard sandwich while talking on the phone with April O’Neil. I will admit that the script is a little bit lackluster, but since that apparently leaves plenty of room for random Arrested Development callbacks, that’s a-okay with me.
To be honest, Arnett’s character is only interesting because Arnett is playing him. The writing is somewhat lacking, but the talented Will Arnett almost completely makes up for that.
Another decent inside joke lands pretty well when the movie self-consciously makes fun of Michael Bay’s original intention of making the Ninja Turtles aliens. (I’m not sure that he really planned to do that. I only know that the internet thought that was his plan and responded with intense, unending vitriol.)
The Negatives:
There were never 99 cheeses on that pizza. They made the mistake of giving us a really long look at it, and trust me. That pizza had all of one cheese, and that cheese was what passes for mozzarella at Pizza Hut. As a (casual) Ninja Turtles fan, I was not thrilled with all the Pizza Hut product placement in the movie. Back in my day, the Ninja Turtles enjoyed extra-gooey New York style pizza in big floppy slices that they ate folded over. This Pizza Hut stuff just lacked character (although I will say I smiled the day we ordered from Pizza Hut and saw online their special katana-cut pizza movie tie-in.)
What looked even worse than the pizza?
Since way back before this movie’s release, I’ve heard steady (almost relentless) complaints about the design of the Ninja Turtles. Personally, I have no problem with their appearance. I didn’t find them weird looking at all.
Now Splinter is another story. I know he’s a rat, and rodents are not exactly the supermodels of the animal kingdom, but there’s something particularly dead-eyed and creepy about Splinter’s design in this movie. He and April O’Neil get such a sweet moment together, but it’s hard to go, “Aww!” and tear up because you’re busy cringing and thinking to yourself, She’s got to get away from that evil, soulless Muppet creature before it gives her bubonic plague!
Speaking of bubonic plague, I found the plot of this movie eerily unsettling. I couldn’t help thinking, Somebody could be planning something like this right now. (I’m sick of hearing about the Ebola virus. Paranoid types like me shouldn’t be exposed to such relentless media hype.)
Overall, I thought the plot of the movie (while coherent) was surprisingly dark and dreary for a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles vehicle. The stakes were so high (for the heroes), and the consequences so grim.
I thought the movie was (painfully) slow starting (with a weird amount of needless shakey cam which for some reason was used only in the beginning). Once it really got going, it was already practically over. The four turtle brothers had great chemistry, but we hardly ever got to see them in action and spent too much time watching them endure great distress.
Shredder’s potential was also squandered. The backstory about his role in another character’s life seems so interesting, but then his actual presence in the film is just kind of unexciting. I really think it was a weird decision to make Splinter just kind of happen across a Ninja training manual, too.
Still I would probably watch a sequel simply because now that the story is started, things can only get better.
Overall:
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a pretty good summer movie for elementary school aged children. I had no idea it would have such an earnest tone, a clear moral, and a coherent story. Is it the greatest movie of all time? No. Does it do justice to the Ninja Turtle legacy? I don’t know. Probably. I mean, let’s face it, none of the movies has ever been all that good. I personally think the cartoons featured writing ten times better than any cinematic treatment.
My five-year-old really enjoyed this movie, though. She found it engaging, touching, suspenseful, and occasionally funny. I personally was surprised that it wasn’t harder to watch. I had expected more action, more noise, more objectification of Megan Fox, and less plot. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles surprised me by being pretty watchable and for the most part coherent. Kids will like it, and adults might, too.
After you watch it, you should order a katana-cut pizza from Pizza Hut because it’s available for a limited time only, so you don’t want to miss out like I did.