Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Review

RYAN: I’ve never been a fan of the TMNT and didn’t see the franchise of the 90s so I had little expectations for this reboot.  They are pop culturally relevant.  I was just praying it would be better than Transformers since it was produced by Michael Bay.  And glady, it is.

MICHAEL: It’ better at least than the first two Transformers.  And it’s not three hours, so it has that going for it.

RYAN: It’s skews juvenile.  The tone is really geared toward the kids.  Our age is not the target audience; unless you’ve grown up with these characters.

MICHAEL: Even if you are nostalgic, though, there are almost no elements from the original Ninja Turtles.  This story is largely original.  Hardly anything ninja about them.  They’re super loud, super bulky and the kept reiterating that they’re over six feet tall.  They cover their origin in this film but it totally had nothing to do with their real origin story.

RYAN: That’s interesting.  Not knowing that, I liked those original aspects.  Megan Fox is not a great actress but I think she’s a lot better than people give her credit for.  She’s more than just a pretty face.  I liked her storyline.  And I find the turtles cute, charming and silly.

MICHAEL: I loved how Raphael and Leonardo didn’t have cartoon voices like they have in previous adaptions.  Michaelangelo and Donatello always had regular people voices so it was cool to hear them all that way in this film.  The effects were pretty good.

RYAN: I liked a lot of the effects scenes and the 3D is very good too.  There are some great NYC aerial shots.

MICHAEL: They took a cue from Peter Jackson with the fifteen minute long falling sequence; somehow everyone carrying on casual conversations while falling down cliffs.  That took all the peril out of it.  I found those moments boring instead of suspenseful.

RYAN: They weren’t even shouting.

MICHAEL: Yeah chaos in every direction and they’re just chatting away.  Things like that bothered me.  I don;t think the Catskills are a twenty minute fall.

RYAN: The thing is – Marvel has set the bar so high for superhero movies.  Balancing the action and humor, like if you compare something like an Iron Man movie to this… there’s no touching it.  But for kids, it’s fine.  There’s a lot of CGI but it’s not as realistic as some other movies.

MICHAEL: The Shredder was ridiculous.  We saw a giant, robot samurai in The Wolverine last year.  We didn’t need to see that again.  To have someone with an arm made of razors continuously punch the turtles and they walk away fine every time was just too much of a leap.  I also didn’t love Megan or Tony Shaloub as the voice of Splinter.

RYAN: I loved seeing Whoopi Goldberg and WIll Arnett.  It’s not a great movie but they fit in with the tone of the film which is silly and cute.  For what that is, it accomplishes it.  But I’d say go see Guardians of the Galaxy a second time before seeing this one.

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