Hero’s in a half shell…

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CAUTION: Spoiler Alert (Although, after reading this article I hope you won’t go watch the movie anyway.)

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are iconic – from comics, to movies, to animated films – you can find them on T-Shirts, lanyards, and buttons nearly everywhere. When it was announced Michael (Transformers) Bay would be working on it, I wasn’t the only one with high hopes for the new direction the franchise would be taking, even if it was different from its roots. A reimagining could be exciting, but the new movie fails to be great. It’s in an awkward limbo between staying true to the lore, and Michael Bayification. These Ninja Turtles instead find themselves on the edge of mediocrity.

The overall plot of the story was bad, and the performance of the human cast didn’t do much to help it. It centers on April O’Neil, sadly portrayed by Megan Fox, (Seriously, why?) a newspaper reporter trying to make it big in New York who is under the constant threat of the Foot Clan. She just so happens to run into the Ninja Turtles twice, and coincidently is friends with the villain Eric Sacks (William Fichtner) who not only created the Ninja Turtles, killed her father, and is Shredder’s apprentice, but he also has a plan to kill everyone in New York and then sell everyone else the cure to get rich. She also saved the Turtles and Master Splinter before they mutated and drop kicks Shredder to death. Yeah, it’s as bad as it sounds. This movie did a simple mop up job of the plot, pouring some water on, it pushed the dirt around and called it clean.

This time around, our amphibious heroes take up a completely different style than that of their iconic look. No longer are they the lovable, little turtles that fight crime and skate board. These new Ninja Turtles are impressive, six foot beasts capable of kicking some serious ass. They look amazing and, thankfully, Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello, and Michelangelo have kept their personalities, despite such a drastic change from there more comical appearance. Their new rendering looks much more serious and menacing however. This sadly, has these CGI Turtles losing out on the charm their more traditional look gave them. They simply aren’t the same.

Well, what about the bad guys? The Foot Clan are supposed to be a ninja cult, not a gun toting terrorist organization. This certainly has to do with the redirection of the Ninja Turtles, (What if your boss told you to fight a six foot hulk in a shell with katanas? I’d think twice.) But they lose so much by not fighting hand-to-hand. The fight scenes show this as the turtles shrug off bullets and tranquilizer darts while stomping all over the Foot Clan. Shredder is no longer the martial arts master he once was. He’s now a giant metal cyborg who looks more like a Transformer than a samurai. He smashes the turtles about until the very cliché flashback-to-childhood-game moment where Shredder stands there and just takes it before falling off a building and climbing back up for an inevitable round two. With Michael Bay at the helm I really expected more explosions but was disappointed again.

Overall, despite how cool they look in CGI, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles lack of plot, rushed pace, cheesy dialogue, and bad fighting scenes make have wonder where the shell Casey Jones was? But in all seriousness, it is a really bad movie, especially if this isn’t your first exposure to the turtles. I’d suggest going and watching the older movies for the nostalgia rather than the new movie for the technology. I give it 2 out of 5 stars.