Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

New York has secret guardian angels, but instead of living in the sky they live in the sewers. And instead of wings they have half shells. I’m talking about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles of course. Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello and Raphael along with the tutelage and parenting of their rat sensei, Master Splinter, keep out of the public eye for their safety. But that becomes more difficult when Shredder and his minions go on a rampage to attack the city. Their secrecy is compromised when they are discovered by April O’Neil (played by Megan Fox), news reporter, and her cameraman (played by Will Arnett). After getting over their shock, they work together to stop the evildoers and save the day.

I am an 80s baby so I’ll always hold a place in my heart for the ninja turtles, and I’m talking the original animated series. Nothing can beat that classic intro; I can still recite it word for word. To this day while I’m willing to give other versions a chance, nothing comes close to that one. And I wasn’t expecting this film to change that in any way. Even still, I have standards.

While I’m not quite as critical about Michael Bay films as other people usually are (I admit that I enjoy a couple of the Transformers movies, especially the first one), I definitely kept my expectations low. The trailer didn’t appear to offer anything special and the CGI looked strange. So upon actually seeing the film, I think it was better than the trailer in terms of story and entertainment, but it was still bad.

The story was as transparent as day and the CGI felt lazy. I didn’t like the design of the turtles and I REALLY didn’t like how they did Master Splinter. As the main characters they should be easy on the eyes but somehow they managed to look like an eye sore. Megan Fox, at first I was strongly opposed to her playing April O’Neil. I felt like she embodied nothing reminiscent of the character. She didn’t prove me wrong, as she once again fails to actually act, but I admit that she wasn’t the worst thing about the film. She was so different from the April I know that I could disassociate pretty easily. She’s just Megan Fox running around being called April.

My favorite turtle is Raphael (I love the color red and he had the coolest weapons, the sais) so I was pleased to see him get quite a bit of spotlight. I checked recent polls and he is the favorite interestingly enough (though not by an overwhelming amount; it’s more even than I expected among all of them).

Overall, it could have been better.

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