The city needs heroes. Darkness has settled over New York City as Shredder and his evil Foot Clan have an iron grip on everything from the police to the politicians. The future is grim until four unlikely outcast brothers rise from the sewers and discover their destiny as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The Turtles must work with fearless reporter April and her wise-cracking cameraman Vern Fenwick to save the city and unravel Shredder's diabolical plan (Summary from Movieweb.com)
It all started with a bet.
Months ago, I was watching the very first trailer for this movie with my eldest brother. Both of us being fans of the old show, our minds couldn't believe that a new movie would arrive soon to our theaters. Especially one with such amazing graphics and action scenes. I was skeptical about the new design of the turtles, but I figures it would pass. What I couldn't stand however, was two things:
Michael Bay & Megan Fox
Watching a number of Bay's movies and Fox's acting ability taught me this: this would be a bad movie. Even worse, Fox would be the one to star as the female lead, April O'Neil. If I could remember correctly, in the cartoon April didn't have long dark hair...
As for Bay, he's all about explosions and lack of good story writing, which is one of my favorite components to a movie. I could never trust him to care for any movie without throwing it down the sewer.
It was from all these cons that I proclaimed that this new TMNT movie would be a disaster. My brother begged to differ, he still thought it'd be an awesome film.
The only way to settle this bet was to watch the movie together.
After seeing the movie, has my standpoint changed?
To my surprise....yes...in a sense!
To my surprise....yes...in a sense!
There was no doubt about it, in the film, they definitely screwed up the background for the turtles, Splinter, and April. The turtles became mutant by landing in toxic waste, not through text experiments. Splinter was a human before he became a rat. And April, again, looked nothing like Megan Fox and Fox keeps pretty much one expression throughout the whole movie, squinted eyes and mouth agape. No emotion whatsoever.
Lastly, I spotted a couple things that didn't make sense. Like this, whenever you see the movie, notice how NYC is all sunny and has nice weather, but in another setting that they go to it's incredibly snowy? Can someone explain how this is possible? How far were these places apart from one another?
Anyways, even with all of that, I have to say that the good outweighed the bad, in a sense. The story was all around cliche to me, but in a fun type of way. It was like watching the cartoon, but in real life. And with a different April O'Neil (still not over that) The turtles themselves were unique as they should be, and each expressed something about themselves that had me enjoying their screen time all the more. The bond that the four shared was explained well and shown through their actions and the time you see them growing up together. You see the love they have for one another and their sensei, Splinter. Their time together was much more interested than the humans.
The dialogue between the character seemed realistic to me, not too cheesy. And surprise surprise, not a lot of explosions from Mr. Bay. At one point I even forgot the movie was directed by him. Bravo.
I was invested in the movie and I shared a lot of laughs with the viewing audience (Thanks to Michelangelo mostly) and it you can get past the botched back story, Megan Fox's acting, and the cheesy plot, I think anyone of any age would enjoy this cartoon turned flick.
So technically, I lost the bet on whether it'd be a bad or good movie. It doesn't matter to me though, I had a good night watching the turtles on screen (plus, we never betted with anything in the first place)
Don't expect the film to follow everything, and if you could get past that, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles will possibly be a 4 out of 5 stars for you.
