Official Synopsis
New York is under attack by the sinister Shredder, but fearless leader Leonardo, brilliant and brainy Donatello, rough and rebellious Raphael and wild and crazy Michelangelo take to the streets to defend their home with the help of intrepid reporter April O’Neil (Megan Fox) and their brilliant sensei, Splinter.
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Back when I was a wee lad around the age of 13, I had a huge Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle collection. Toys, VCR tapes and comics led the way for my TMNT obsession, which eventually led me to the movies as well. The first original film from 1990 reinforced the coolness of the brand and was entertaining, though now it’s a bit goofy, even though it probably helped to launch Sam Rockwell’s career. As the mid 90s approached, the TMNT obsession faded and the lasting good memories of the brand survives within this 38 year old today.
When I heard that Paramount was rebooting the franchise with director Jonathan Liebesman at the helm and Michael Bay producing, I was a bit skeptical about how they were going to handle another childhood favorite.
What came out of this film lies squarely in the middle of entertaining dumb fun and a struggling story. Let’s talk.
The film starts out with an introduction to April O’Neil (Megan Fox), a struggling reporter wanting to hit the ‘big story’ and launch her career. She sets out to investigate the ‘Foot Clan’, a team of underground criminals digging deep into the heart of New York. Eventually, she tracks down the criminals, or at least a heist, and gets out of trouble thanks to the help of some hard-shelled heroes.
This is a perfect way to start the movie. You introduce O’Neil into the mix, get right to the Foot Clan and their criminal behavior and then bring in the turtles secretly to establish our heroes. This is how the first film in 1990 began, how the comics would begin and how the story of TMNT should begin in this new film. Loved the start.
As the movie continues, we’re introduced to Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael and the wise-cracking Donatello (my personal favorite from this film) through April stumbling upon them — or tracking them down to be more specific. The best part of this film is when the turtles are onscreen and in action. Their dialogue and how they interact with April for the first time is just brilliant. They’re funny, kid-friendly and very entertaining to see. What’s also impressive about these guys is that they’re a lot tougher than the 1990 versions of the turtles. You can see a little bit of aggressiveness in them that harkens back to the original Laird and Eastman comic books. Not over-the-top aggressive, but not as goofy as the 1990 movie.
Anyway, once the turtles come into light, again, whenever they’re onscreen from this point on, they’re the best part of the film.
Getting the turtles into the light and uncovered by April O’Neil is simply a disaster, though. The writers added in that ‘OH! YEAH! My dad experimented on turtles once with the help from this guy named Eric Sacks (William Fichtner)’ storyline through April O’Neil. Yes, you read that correctly, the origin of the turtles is introduced through April O’Neil in a ‘oh, yeah!’ moment. I don’t like being overly critical of movies, but this is one of the worst things I’ve seen in a movie. There is no way that the origin should be as simple as April O’Neil remembering she had a camera in a closet that showed four turtles, and a rat, being experimented on. I know it’s a kid’s film, but even the 1990 version of TMNT had a better explanation than that. This is how the origin of the turtles is introduced and it just seems like a complete cop-out.
This explanation not only helps to explain where the turtles originated from, but also introduces our soon-to-be antagonist, Eric Sacks. Again, it’s a cheap way to explain things, and introduce what you already know to be the enemy in the film, but I guess it gets the job done in a sense.
Once that gets done, we’re introduced again to the turtles where O’Neil has a conversation with them, as well as being brought back to their sewer lair to meet Splinter (Tony Shalhoub) for the first time. The movie then shifts gears and everything about the story soon comes to light, including the bad guys discovering the turtles existence, and the film is back on track where it’s this group versus the Foot Clan in a race to save New York City before an evil event occurs.
As the movie progresses into the second act, the villains unveil their intentions, which includes trapping and ‘bleeding’ the turtles for the ‘ooze’ in their blood. I won’t go further than this with revealing how the third act plays out, though I will tell you that it’s far more entertaining than the second act, and less of a mess.
The real entertainment value of this film lies within the turtles. Like I said previously, when they’re onscreen and in action, they’re really fun to watch and listen to. The story built around them is what’s not good about this movie. The introduction of our heroes, the motivation of the enemies and the design of Shredder and the Foot Clan is really not well done. The 1990 film had a more solid story attached to it that was fun and kid-friendly from beginning to end. It certainly wasn’t an Academy Award winning film, but it wasn’t overthought and seemed quite competent and structured for the world it was housed in. This TMNT just seems like there was no thought really given to the structure of the story. No real development of anyone outside of O’Neil and the turtles. It was enormously shallow in a lot of areas, and an incredible disappointment when it came to Shredder.
Overall, I loved how the turtles were and how they interacted during their onscreen moments, but the story around them could have been far better. It did end up entertaining my small kids who aren’t worried about such trivial things like their father, so there’s that to look forward to, if you’re a parent.
I do hope that Paramount continues with this TMNT series because I think the turtles are a good enough reason. If a great story was built around them, then the sky is the limit. Until then, TMNT isn’t a bad once-through film, though certainly nothing memorable.
On the Blu-ray side of things, the film looks positively gorgeous on Blu-ray. The dark and light scenes actually play through without any graininess or artifacts showing up in the picture (that’s a huge plus when you consider how much CG was added and how many scenes were shot in low-light situations). The green, blue, red, black, white, purple and orange are done well in this film and really do stand out beautifully. The best scene in the movie is the fight at the end, which looks stunning on the HD format. Paramount did a great job with this transfer.
The audio for this release comes to you in 7.1 DolbyHD, which is gorgeous for this sort of release.
As for the features, here’s what you should expect:
· Feature film in high definition
· Digital Reality
· In Your Face! The Turtles in 3D
· It Ain’t Easy Being Green
· Evolutionary Mash-Up
· Turtle Rock
· Extended Ending
· “Shell Shocked” Music Video
· Making of “Shell Shocked”
There is a ton of features included with this release of TMNT. You get to see a lot of behind the scenes stuff, some really fun features that kids will like and music videos…which in my opinion outperforms anything that Vanilla Ice can contribute to the TMNT series (though it was entertaining back in the day).
Anyway, quality and quantity are on your side with the features. It’s a great set of features and adds value to the experience.
