New TMNT Has Shocking Lack of Turtle Power

Directed by Jonathan Liebesman.

Written by Andre Nemic, Josh Appelbaum and Evan Daugherty.

Starring Megan Fox, William Fichtner, Will Arnett with Alan Ritchson, Noel Fisher, Jeremy Howard & Johnny Knoxville as the Turtles and Tony Shalhoub as Splinter.

PG-13, 100 minutes.

For a movie about four mutated amphibians who practice martial arts to fight crime and love eating pizza on the way to work, a lot of suspension of disbelief is needed. Not saying this isn’t a premise that cannot be taken seriously, given the required scripting gymnastics, but it’s in the best interests of the writers and the director to make a conscious decision in regards to tone and stick with it. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles oscillates too much between serious scenes and silly scenes before growing tired with itself and rushing us out the door.

In the new film, Megan Fox stars as April O’Neil. She’s a reporter relegated to puff pieces who desperately wants that first big story to elevate her credibility as a journalist. She stumbles upon our titular characters while moonlighting an investigation into the mysterious vigilantes and they team up to stop the Foot Clan, a criminal organization led by the evil Shredder and a deliciously hammy yet oddly deadpan scientist-industrialist (played by William Fichtner).

The underlying problem of the movie, from a purely biased perspective, is that April O’Neil is essentially the protagonist. Everything revolves around her in such a way that was most definitely intended to evoke a familial connection between her and the turtles but stretches the implausibility meter almost past 1993’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III levels. That’s not to say that there are any glaring issues with Megan Fox’s performance beyond what you would expect from her, but no one paying money for a movie about teenage mutant ninja turtles is interested giving the spotlight to an adventurous news reporter.

As such, the turtles never feel like the focus of the movie. Beyond their physical characteristics and certain variations in their design (Donatello has glasses and tech gear, Raphael has a do-rag, etc), it takes some pre-knowledge of the character’s personalities to tell each apart. The CGI designs are ugly, too, not up to the standard of four guys in rubber turtle suits that were used for the original live-action movies. Once the novelty of having to shoot their fight scenes with fast cutting and darkness has worn off and we’ve seen them in full view, the action gets fairly dull, the lone exception being a set-piece going down a snowy mountain.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is tonally awkward. It feels like it’s going for something kind of serious in its first thirty minute, then turns on a heel and becomes rather silly, then back again. Not that either approach would have been a bad route to take, it just wouldn’t have been as wishy-washy as this final product when it tries to have it both ways.

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