Poster Created by: Paramount Pictures
Courtesy of: Wikipedia Protected Under: Fair Use, to illustrate subject of the review
It takes a special sort of combination that makes MUTATED TURTLES THAT ARE NINJAS feel like a life-less boring experience without an original bone in its body. Being a film produced by Michael Bay, directed by the guy who gave us Battle: Los Angeles, starring Megan Fox, with a $125 Million budget and a troubled hype mainly involving aliens and Shredder supposedly being a white dude, there wasn’t much hope for it. But my goodness it didn’t feel like they even tried to make it even enjoyably bad.
To put it bluntly, this film is a Frankenstein monster of modern blockbuster tropes, corrupt corporate executives who want to make profit out of misery, a man who acts behind the shadows, “all the characters went to high school†sort of origin writing, a climax that takes place on top of a tower, “I killed your father!â€â€¦ suddenly aliens aren’t looking so bad right now. A film that tries in no attempt to even make fun of how overused these elements are played frustratingly straight, a far cry from being based on a comic book that was essentially a parody.
Making the routine plot all the more worse is the characters lacking just about any development. April O’ Neil (Megan Fox) is the central character and yet her character is more dictated by the plot, than vice versa. O’Neil barely has any real endearing traits on her own at times coming off as the filmmakers trying to make a female Sam Witwicky from the Transformers films but Fox cannot pull it off, as she always looks like she’s in a constant state of confusion. The Turtles have their character traits but have no character arcs, they are merely defined by their one-note traits, and their clothing has more actual personality than the people wearing them. For those coming in expecting that Will Arnett could be the film’s saving grace but sad to say not even GOB can magically make the movie better. Arnett’s Vern Fenwick is just an unfunny comic relief and kind of a creep around April, even wearing a friggin fedora at one point.
But even more egregious, the film makes some changes to what people know and love about the Turtles to which it feels even dumber than what came before. Say goodbye to Hamato Yoshi, Splinter (Danny Woodburn w/ the voice of Tony Shaloub) and the Turtles learned martial arts from a book, and not even get cool Kung Fu Hustle powers either. In fact there is actually little to no personal connection between Shredder (Tohoru Masamune)and the Turtles, most of theirs and April’s backstory revolves around a character called Eric Sacks (William Fichtner) to a point in which ol’ Shred-head ends up being a pointless part of a freaking Turtles movie. The foot clan itself is just pathetic, at very little point do they provide a challenge for the Turtles and Karai (Minae Noji) in spite of supposedly being Shredder’s pupil is a big pile of nothing in the film, spends most of her screen-time getting her ass kicked.
Most importantly, the film just isn’t fun. As much as they try to make humor of the proceedings, they come across as flat attempts to distract from the fact that the film basically looked at what other movies has done and thought they should un-ironically copy them wholesale. Sorry but I see the stitches, so much so I can’t even think of anything big to compliment it with.
It’s the worst film I have seen so far this year and possibly the worst Turtles movie in the whole franchise. The third movie if anything at least didn’t make me feel so bored.
End of Rant
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