Shell-shock, but not in the good way.
Yes a new iteration of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has been out at cinemas for
over a week now and it is brought to us by the man who has already ruined our
childhood once, producer Michael “who needs a script” Bay. The good news is that all
those crazy rumours about the Turtles being aliens instead of mutants, a white guy
playing Shredder, and a brunette playing a famous red-head turned out to be mostly
untrue. The unfortunate thing though, the film is still an incredibly awful piece of shit.
Megan Fox does her best impression of Megan Fox in a yellow jacket, which to be fair is
a step up from her performance in Transformers where she didn’t have a yellow jacket
(note: the yellow jacket exudes a lot more personality than Megan Fox.) Even though
Megan is playing the lead in the film, she is solely there to provide forced exposition
throughout the entire film using some of the clunkiest dialogue ever committed to paper
using crayon. Outside of this we also have the voice of Tony Shalhoub (Splinter) and
William Fichtner (not Shredder) delivering more forced exposition, as a matter of fact
95% of dialogue in this film is either explaining what has just happened or what is
happening on screen at that very moment. Granted Fichtner delivers his lines with some
skill, in respect to the fact you can see him smirking the whole time like he knows the
films a joke, but Fox delivers her lines like she’s reading them for the first time before
saying them out loud. The last of the human cast is Will Arnett, who I normally like, but
when you watch this film you realise that he serves no purpose, you could literally write
him out of the entire film by just establishing that Megan Fox can drive.
The film suffers many of the repetitive flaws found in every single blockbuster that’s
been released over the last 8 years such as the over-use of slow-mo shots featuring
physic-defying acrobatics/choreography and the old “magic blood” maguffin. The most
frustrating element of the film is the “Avi Arad” art of filmmaking by making all the
character linked for no apparent reason at all. Because let’s face it, when you’re selling
the idea of six foot tall roided-up talking turtles who know ninjitsu that they learnt from a
book, the audience won’t buy into the concept unless all the key characters are
intimately linked to the origin story. Of course, the villain, Shredder, is a walking knife
factory and a highly trained ninja who looks like Edward Scissorhand fucked a cheesegrater
and had a baby. As the “main villain” he makes very little impact on the story
overall and despite having knives sticking out of every orifice does not manage to cut a
single person nor use said knives when he has a clear upper hand.
With some simple tweaking for the sequel, we could have a great Ninja Turtle movie
that long-time fans deserve to see. Until then, we have one elevator scene to keep a
smile on our face, but that is still not enough to warrant watching this before it is on freeto-
air TV.
One and a half violated cheese-grater.
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