Review – Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Like with any big budget reboot of a beloved franchise, rabid fans were worried that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles would simply be an empty rehash of the popular films they watched as children. But here’s a little secret that no one really wants to admit: the original live-action films were never that good.

Like any child of the 80s, I grew up loving the Ninja Turtles. I watched the cartoon religiously, I had all of the toys and I would buy the ice cream sandwiches, green fruit pies and other assorted officially licensed foodstuff. And I watched all of the films in the theater when they came out. Even the third one, though by that point the luster was fading and I was getting a bit old for the Turtles. (I watched the film in an otherwise empty theater.)

We saw those earlier films through childhood eyes. And nostalgia has us remembering them fondly. But objectively, they are all pretty terrible. They are meandering, sloppy and lack the charm of the cartoon they were based on.

Which is why I am comfortable saying this, though I know it will be a controversial statement: this remake is the best live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie ever made.

Which is not to say it’s a great film. In fact, it’s far from it. But it is a perfectly adequate one. It understands the characters, gives them a compelling conflict and builds to a satisfyingly grand finale. It’s a fairly cookie-cutter movie, but it hits all of the right notes and doesn’t have any glaring problems that keep it from working. It doesn’t swing for the fences, but it comfortably hits a single.

The film serves as an origin story for the turtles. In this version, as a child April O’Neil (Megan Fox) saved the then-unmutated turtles from a fire in her father’s lab, setting them and their master Splinter (Tony Shahloub) free by releasing them into a sewer drain. In the sewer, the mutagen that was in their system, thanks to experiments conducted by O’Neil’s father and his partner Eric Sacks (William Fichtner), takes hold and turns them into our titular heroes.

Splinter, a talking rat, learns karate and acts as a father figure to the turtles, training them to one day become crime fighters. Splinter tries to keep his undisciplined “children” hidden away in the sewer to protect them until they are ready to be out in the world, but precocious, rebellious teens that they are, they sneak out in secret at night. It is during one of their nightly adventures that they are reunited with O’Neil, who is now a television reporter stuck doing fluff pieces who is looking for her big break.

The turtles are pitted against their nemesis Shredder (Tohoru Masamune), the leader of a group of thieves known as the Foot Clan. Shredder is trained in martial arts and has a bad ass robotic suit that protects him and gives him a variety of deadly weapons at his fingertips. And he has a pretty smart plan to bring the city of New York to its knees (one that nicely ties in the turtles’ backstory and the fire at the lab).

While everyone gets nervous when Michal Bay (who served as a producer on this film) is involved, director Jonathan Liebesman and his writing team stay true to the characters, even while changing their origins to serve the story. Leonardo (Johnny Knoxville/Pete Ploszek) is a convincing leader, Raphael (Alan Ritchson) is full of angst, Michelangelo (Noel Fisher) is the charming, funny one and Donatello (Jeremy Howard) is the smart one.

The film also adds a new character to the mix – Vernon Fenwick (Will Arnett), April O’Neil’s cameraman. Arnett is well-cast in the role and provides the film with most of its comic relief. Arnett, William Fichtner and Tony Shahloub are easily the most enjoyable parts of the film.

One interesting aesthetic choice Liebesman made was to give all four turtles distinct appearances. Instead of simply relying on different colored masks to tell them apart, he gives them different body shapes and accessories (beyond their individualized weapons). Personally, I liked that all four turtles looked and dressed slightly different, though I rolled my eyes at Donatello’s taped glasses, which are such a tired way to convey a character is a nerd and also make no sense logically since he doesn’t have ears, so there’s nothing holding the glasses up on his face. Liebesman also gave the characters lips, which many fans online found off-putting when stills began to leak from the production, but I personally barely noticed the difference.

The film is paced well and builds to a satisfying conclusion. It even offers a “twist,” though it’s an incredibly predictable one that I saw coming miles away. It has a few solid jokes and several big action scenes. And it hits all of the requisite notes it needs to.

It’s not the best film you’ll ever see, but it is currently the best live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle film ever made. So if you grew up watching the original cartoon and either want to nostalgically revisit that world or share it with your kids, this film will do the trick.

Written by Joel Murphy. If you enjoy his reviews, he also writes a weekly pop culture column called Murphy’s Law, which you can find here. You can contact Joel at murphyslaw@hobotrashcan.com.