Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

"Cowabunga!"

We dared to hope, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Franchise, as we have already seen, was ridiculous and bizarre. But it was memorable, it was fun and nostalgic. You either loved it completely or loved it ironically, or of course you hated it. But one thing that everyone did was remember it. This one manages to do only one of these things, make everyone hate it.

Let’s get through this. As darkness settles over New York City when the evil Shredder has a grip on everything from police to politicians it will take something new to break this vice. At the same time April O’Neil wants to be a real reporter and thinks she has hit the big time when she discovers four unique crime fighters.

For starters this is a TMNT film that has the least amount of Turtle content in it so far. We spend more time focussing on Megan Fox, who just… acts like Megan Fox, enough is said on the issue. Possibly the only thing this film got right was the personality of the Turtles, they were fun and seemed to have a genuine relationship, this may just be because I was expecting to hate them so much. But they were quite likable, but putting these personalities in bodies that resembles the Lizard from Amazing Spider Man made it more difficult to like the characters. Getting bak to the problem though, like the Transformers franchise by taking humans that we do not care about or like at all. More Turtles might have this film much better because they have character, they’re fun and wild and genuine teenagers. We want to watch them.

Be warned though, that is the last positive statement about this film. In terms of plot it’s so weakly put together that it could have come out of the mind of the only people who will actually enjoy this film. The origin story should never be mentioned in the world of films again, it makes no sense and tries far too much to play the idea of destiny. That leads me onto another problem.

If you are going to make a film about four giant reptiles, do not try to make it serious. It’s a ridiculous concept, you do not need hard-core action scenes. As a result every time you do see something appropriately over the top you just think off it as being over the top rather than actually suiting the TMNT franchise.

At other points the film looks too nerdy for mainstream success and too mainstream for nerdy success. Everything’s been done on a bigger scale but do not for a moment think that bigger means better. The first TMNT film holds up even better when you compare it to this one. It has themes of family and there’s an actual villain instead of some guy in the shadows. Here things just happen, without any sense of direction or themed compass (do you like that term, just made it up).

On more than one occasion it looked as if they took the easy way out with certain plot points and character development. The reason Marvel does so well is because they have embraced their universe and the eccentric nature of their material, casing point Guardians of the Galaxy. It proves that even if you have an out of this world concept with weird characters, you can still make us care about them you can still make us love them, you can still have a great summer blockbuster.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles feels as if it wants to avoid standing out as much as they can. In the end it just becomes mediocre. And that is by a long, long way the worst thing anyone could do to this franchise.

Result: 2/10