In a climate where anything with a hint of name recognition is being tossed up on the big screen for mass consumption, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is too big a property to lie dormant for long. So here we are, seven years after the animated TMNT failed to make an impression, Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes production company has delivered a shiny new live action reboot with a view to selling the titular amphibians to a new generation of kids.
Though certain aspects of the turtles’ back stories have been changed to accommodate a neater – if more ridiculous – plot, the formula is essentially the same: four turtles and one rat, through a series of mutations, have grown to human-like stature and dwell in the sewers of New York City, learning martial arts and consuming copious amounts of pizza and pop culture before emerging to protect the city from the evil Shredder and his Foot Clan.
Each turtle has an easily identifiable personality trait: Leonardo’s the straight-laced leader; Donatello’s the science geek; Raphael’s the moody badass; and Michaelangelo’s the wise-cracking skater kid. They’re lead by Splinter (voiced by Tony Shalhoub), a rat who apparently mastered Ninjutsu in order to train his adopted turtle children. The CGI and motion capture is impressive – should we expect any less nowadays? – but the character design itself, particularly on Splinter, is jarring and more than a little unpleasant.
Nonetheless, the turtles are spotted by April O’Neill (Megan Fox), a spunky young TV reporter desperate to find a big story. Of course, no-one believes her so she has to team up with her comic-relief cameraman (Will Arnett) and uncovers a sinister plot by generically evil corporate big-wig Eric Sacks (William Fichtner) to harvest the turtle’s blood as an antidote for a virus Shredder plans to unleash on the world. What Shredder gets from this is anyone’s guess; his sole motivation seems to be the ever vague promise of ‘power’. This is a character that seems to only exist in a shadowy dojo or inside his robotic samurai suit that’s equal parts Transformer and Swiss Army Knife.
In what might have been a wise-move, the turtles are essentially supporting players to Fox’s April O’Neill. The problem however is that the character is so poorly written and Fox’s performance is so blank, consisting of a variety of dead-eyed pouts, that it’s impossible to invest anything in her plight. More entertaining is Arnett’s sleazy cameraman, a role that’s still badly written but Arnett does a good job of wringing laughs from the clunky dialogue.
It’s pretty standard fare for this kind of film and in its defence, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is never actually boring. It’s often laughably silly and at times downright cringeworthy with jokes and references that already feel dated, but its fairly merciful 101 minute run time moves at a quick enough clip, making for passable entertainment that’s bright and breezy enough to appeal to the younger audience that it’s trying to snare.
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