Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles review

The heroes in a half-shell are back on the big screen, but do they deliver turtle power or are they yesterday’s pizza?

While the latest film version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles isn’t as dreadful as fans were expecting it is bereft of imagination and intelligence.

Admittedly, the premise of Ninja Turtles is completely bonkers, but Guardians of Galaxy proved that it is possible to take silly characters and ideas and present them in a way that carries weight. If that film can have audiences caring about a talking raccoon and tree then, surely, Ninja Turtles doesn’t have to be this dumbed down.

From its inception, this series knew it was ridiculous, in fact, that was the point. The turtles first made their debut in 1984 in a dark, gritty comic book meant to be a parody of other popular comic books of the era including Daredevil and Frank Miller’s Ronin. Nothing in the new Ninja Turtles could be remotely construed as satiric. Instead, the film is full of cliches and, unlike Guardians of the Galaxy, there is no attempt to subvert them.

We get unironic appearances of such chestnuts as the monologuing villain, a bomb that is disabled at the last second and a character claiming he wasn’t crying that it was just dust. The most egregious example is what is done with Donatello. Since Donnie is the smart one, screenwriters Josh Appelbaum, André Nemec and Evan Daugherty present him as a nerd complete with glasses with tape in the middle, a retainer and a snort laugh.

Fans of the series, will be frustrated in the changes to the origins of the turtles, their sensi the rat, Splinter, and the rivalry with the ninja gang-leader, the Shredder. The creation of the turtles is now tied directly to news reporter April O’Neil (Megan Fox), their primary contact to the human world, in a way that is eye-rolling. The alterations also rob the conflict between Splinter, the turtles and Shredder of its emotional power.

Director Jonathan Liebesman uses the action directing style du jour, which is full of quick edits and shaky camera work. Per usual, this means its difficult to discern what is happening. There is one decent action sequence, a chase down a snowy mountain, but even here the reliance of CGI creates a disconnect.

The turtles, which look more like a quartet of Hulks than a team of stealth ninjas, and Splinter were created using motion-capture effects and, on a technical level, are quite impressive. The issue is the off-puttingly realistic look of the design. These are our heroes, we should want to look at them for 90 minutes.

The live-action Turtles films from the 1990s are hardly masterpieces, but at least the first couple actually showed them interacting and hanging out like teens. Heck, there were even moments of introspection. There’s nothing like that in the latest version. The closest thing we get to the turtles just goofing off is a 30-second bit involving beatboxing in elevator before battle.

Alec Kerr