Teenage Muntant Ninja Turtles Movie Review

Producer Michael Bay and Director Jonathan Liebesman attempt to bring Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman’s comic book creations back to the big-screen with this latest reboot installment simply titled Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

While the film has its moments of decent comedic interactions between the 4 CGI-based Turtles, the movie lacks any kind of credible story and the CGI/Special FX are pretty lacking by today’s standards. This is especially true following hot-on-the-heels of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy which had amazing effects and proved CGI-based characters could appear as life-like as their human counterparts on screen.

Though minor changes have been made to the Turtles’ origins for this latest film, the producer and writers manage to stay fairly true to Eastman and Laird’s original intent (i.e. the Turtles aren’t aliens). However, the main plot points for the story itself seem to be heavily borrowed from the first Andrew Garfield Amazing Spider-Man movie including a large tower falling with the heroes hanging over the city of New York.

Despite the weak story and a poor pairing of voice actors to characters such as Tony Shalhoub trying to portray the wise and normally Asian-sounding sensei Master Splinter, my biggest complaint of the movie is just the bad looking special effects. Shredder ends up looking like a miniature reject from one of Michael Bay’s Transformer movies with his armored suit of oversized Ginsu knives. Splinter looks like something from the 80’s movie The Dark Crystal which back in 1982 was amazing, but not so much by today’s standards.

Though I imagine young kids might still walk away from this one somewhat entertained, sadly I can’t say the same will hold true for Turtle fans of all ages. In short when your strongest attributes are Megan Fox’s acting and some Turtle fart jokes, you can probably figure out what you’re in store for.

There is no after-credits scene (this isn’t a Marvel Movie), however there is a short somewhat funny scene right after the credits start to roll featuring two of the Turtles.

Grade: C-