Aidan the Aspie Critic: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014)

Welcome to another movie review! This one is, sing it with me now, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles! Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles! Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles! Heroes in a halfshell, turtle power!

I'm not even going to explain who the Ninja Turtles are. I'm pretty sure you all already know. Starting out as a small, independent comic book in the '80s, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles became quite a hit, inspiring more comics, action figures, video games, countless TV and movie adaptations, mountains of disgusting junk food, and even a live concert tour. The movie I will be reviewing today is the most recent Ninja Turtles movie called, well, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, produced by Michael Bay. Oh no.

The movie is about April O'Neal, a young reporter in New York. She hates her job because she never gets to do anything exciting. That is, until the evil Foot Clan and their leader The Shredder attack New York. April witnesses one of the attacks, but then spots something even more strange, 4 giant turtles fighting the Foot. April tells people about her encounter, but everyone thinks she's crazy. Undiscouraged, April investigates more, and eventually meets the turtles, 4 giant pizza eating, Kung-Fu fighting, crime stopping, wise cracking brothers named Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo, and Raphael. The turtles bring April to the sewers where she meets the turtle's master, a giant rat named Splinter. Splinter explains the great danger the Foot Clan poses and tells of their evil plan to take over New York and the world. Will the TMNT and April defeat the Shredder and stop the Foot Clan's plan? Watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to find out.

This movie wasn't especially good, but it wasn't especially bad either. Michael Bay didn't ruin the Ninja Turtles. Everybody thought that the Ninja Turtles were going to be aliens, but those rumours were untrue. He DID change a lot of stuff from the original, but it mostly worked to the movie's advantage. There was only one change I took issue with, they gave Donatello glasses. These huge, taped up, nerd glasses that he wears OVER his mask! Okay, Donnie is a pretty nerdy character, but he didn't need freaking glasses! Why not give him glasses that are actually goggles? That would've been fine, and it would look cool. These giant nerd glasses just look SO STUPID!!! That and Splinter's re-design is pretty ugly. And the Foot Clan's re-design is pretty bad. They don't even look anything like ninjas! The movie changed the turtle's and Splinter's backstories to something that made a LOT more sense than their original backstories. I didn't take any issue with the turtle's re-designs. I think they actually look pretty good, except for maybe the faces. They gave them different body shapes and clothing to tell them apart! This is a lot more cool than only giving them different coloured masks and different weapons. The Shredder is one of the coolest villains EVER in this movie!!!!!! Instead of just making him a samurai Darth Vader/Wolverine rip off, they went all the way and made him one of the most deadly and threatening villains I have ever seen! Instead of just having knives popping out of his hands, he can now shoot knives from anywhere in his body! He also has magnets built into his suit so he can pull the knives back! AWESOME!!!! However, as threatening as Shredder is, his evil plan makes no sense. But then again, Shredder has never had very good evil plans in the past, either. I really liked all the little references and homages to the original Ninja Turtles comic and even the original cartoon. For example, the opening and end credits are done in an Eastman and Laird comic book style and Shredder says that tonight he was going to dine on turtle soup. The humour was okay, but not great. The jokes coming from Will Arnett were not funny at all. I didn't even crack a smile. The humour coming from the turtles always got a giggle, but their humour consists of absolutely nothing but pop cultural references, giving the movie a pretty dated feel. There were lots of important Ninja Turtles characters that didn't appear in this movie, like Casey Jones, Bebop, Rocksteady, and Kraang, but they will probably make appearances in later instalments. There is an obvious setup for a sequel. In conclusion, this movie is bad. The story makes no sense, some of the acting is pretty bad, and it just has Michael Bay written all over it. HOWEVER, this is still an enjoyable movie. It's not high-class entertainment, it's a popcorn flick. It's not that bad at all if you just want a fun movie! It could've been a lot worse, Michael Bay has made much worse movies based on '80s cartoons than this one. *cough*Transformers 2*cough*! Just take this movie for what it is. This movie gets 2.3 stars out of 5. Not a good movie, but you will still enjoy it!

Have you seen Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? What did you think of it? Tell me in the comments!