Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014)

EXPLOSIONSSSS

"Mysterious. Dangerous. Reptilious. You've never seen heroes like this."

Reptilious huh? WELL THEN I guess it must really be an exceptional work. OR WAIT MAYBE IT'S STUPID BULLSHIT. Well hello everyone, I'm buried in like three feet of snow, basically in a frozen tomb, and it is time for the Tagline. Today, as I have long hinted, I will be talking about the most recent Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, you know the one with Megan Fox in it. That's right gang, it's time to pay the piper at long last. First a little background, and then right on in to the good stuff. So for those not in the know about Ninja Tortles and all their tortings, go here and read about a much better movie about heroes in a half-shell. It's okay, I'll wait. All set? Alright then, back to the horrible present. THIS iteration of the Ninja Turtles was conceived into being shortly after Nickelodeon acquired the rights to the franchise, and was co-produced by Nickelodeon movies and Michael Bay's very own studio Platinum Dunes, which I'm sure just filled everyone with so much excitement. After all, who could forget the stunningly brilliant and exciting Transformers movies? No one can, because they won't stop fucking making them, one after another. What are there like five of them now? Anyway This movie doesn't have Marky Mark in it, but it DOES have Megan Fox, and I mean a LOT of her. I think she gets more on-screen time than any other character in the movie so... we'll talk about that in a second. Anyway this movie is a re-reboot, ignoring the mediocre and financially middling movie from 2007, and teaching us that it's never too soon to get another origin story, again. That actually brings up a good point, about constantly redoing origin stories. See the way I see it, the first movie with a character is not the most interesting one. I understand that sometimes a story is so fucked that you have to redo it, but I think we can safely assume that like, everyone knows who the ninja turtles are, and make a movie about something other than "their first momentous fight against Shredder". Particularly because they already made that movie, everyone liked it, and you probably won't do it better a second time around.

Does this make your shell feel tight? : (

These guys didn't get that memo though. Instead the memo they got said "hey, let's make a TMNT movie, but the story will mostly be about April O'Neil. Also let's have Megan Fox carry basically the entire movie." I assume this memo was sent from a lunatic who worked in the mail room or something. Anyway, April is pretty much the crux of the plot, and the turtles are apparently her childhood lab friends? That makes everything else that happens weirder. The turtle designs are... better than initial exposure led me to believe, but they still kind of look like weird Shrek turtle-aliens. I can say that I found the way they blended into the world around them pretty impressive actually, but that's more a testament to good CGI than anything else, and was only impressive for a few minutes before the sheer mind numbing quality of the movie cut through. Also the general grossness because like... for some reason Mikey keeps making gross sex jokes about April? I don't know who these are aimed at but like... that isn't what I want in my turtles movie. I NEVER want that, ever, and I don't want to meet the sick fuck who does. While not directed by Bay himself, this movie still bears some of the slow-motion, spastic action fingerprints that his latter day works have become known for, but I confess that this movie is no Dark of the Moon at least.

HOW DOES SOMETHING THIS SIZE SNEAK.

The problem is that this is all been there done that. Like I said before, they already made this damned movie, and I liked it better then. Megan Fox does the best she can but 1)she isn't that strong a leading lady and 2)to be honest she doesn't have a ton to work with to begin with, given the generally weak ass script and generic super-villain plotting. I think she did a pretty admirable job all things considered, but it's sort of a weird choice to make the characters of the turtles not actually central to the movie. The movie doesn't take any chances, and that made it just pretty forgettable overall. Believe me, if there was a person who would cut this movie a break it would definitely be me, but it just assembles a pretty average cast of support actors, throws them into leading roles, and then gives them nothing interesting to do (as funny as Will Arnett often is). William Fichtner just isn't that scary a bad guy, and a robot clad and generally non-character Shredder isn't either. In the original live action movie I just felt like the Shredder had a much less stupid plan than "nearly destroy the world and then rule what's left of it". He seemed less like a James Bond villain and more like a legitimately bad guy, who was going to take advantage of wayward youths to build an army. As plans go you could do worse.

Action news is on the scene.

So swing and a miss with new ninja turtles. There's nothing here you haven't seen before, except proof that literally any male creature, even a giant mutant turtle, will take a few cheap passes at Megan Fox if given the opportunity. Also briefly Whoopie Goldberg for some reason is in the movie. Maybe she had nothing to do that afternoon. Despite negative reviews like the one I just gave, this movie pretty much killed it in the box office, ending out at around 477 million, recouping its fairly large budget about 4 times. That's not half bad, so I have to wonder if we'll get a second helping of mediocrity. That's all for today folks! Join me again on Thursday, assuming we don't all freeze to death.