I was a huge Ninja Turtles fan growing up.  I had all of the toys, watched the cartoon show every day, dressed as a Ninja Turtle for two different Halloweens (Michelangelo and Donatello), and the first time I went to New York City I pointed to a manhole cover and asked my mom if that was where the Ninja Turtles lived.  I even repeatedly watched the video of the musical stage show.  In fact, the only aspect of the Turtles that I was never interested in as a kid were the comics.  But more than anything, I watched the 1990 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie over and over again.  It was the first film that I ever completely memorized, and I wore that VHS out.  I was originally supportive of resurrecting the Turtles for the big screen, as I feel like they fill a niche that most other comic book superhero movies seem to miss.  However, the end result fails to capture what made the Turtles special to begin with and is nothing more than a watered-down shadow of the well know characters, too eager to be “cool” to be of much interest.

This new version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles follows a familiar storyline at first, as intrepid reporter April O’Neil investigates a group of thieves known as the Foot Clan.  The Foot have been harassing New York City, and their latest movements have had them stealing cargo from the docks.  April, who wants to be a serious journalist but is only assigned fluff pieces, sneaks down to the docks looking for an interview and stumbles upon a theft in action.  As she watches, the Foot are dispatched by shadowy warriors, but no one at the news station will believe her story.  However, she later stumbles across a Foot attack in a subway and manages to catch a glimpse of these mysterious saviors before following them to a rooftop where she hears them discussing their latest victory.  But nothing could have prepared her for what she finds high above the New York City streets.

Of course, we know what she finds, four enormous, anthropomorphic turtles named after Renaissance painters: Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael and Donatello.  The turtles are largely as you might remember, whether from the early days of the characters or the most recent animated TV version.  Leonardo is the leader, Michelangelo is the goofy, fun-loving one, Raphael is a rude jerk and Donatello is a geek.  Despite the Turtles warning her not to tell anyone about them, April continues her investigation, which has direct ties to her father, who passed away when she was just a child in a fire at the research laboratory where he worked.  His research has ties to both to the Turtles and the Foot Clan, and the key player in events turns out to be Eric Sacks, April’s father’s old partner, now a wealthy scientist and investor who has his own secret agenda.

There’s not much point to going any further into the plot, both because to say more would be to delve into spoiler territory, but also because plot is generally unimportant in a Ninja Turtles movie.  Sure, it has to exist to set up the comedy, drama or action, but beyond that it’s neither memorable nor worth discussing.  You don’t go to a Ninja Turtle film for plot, you go for characters and action, and I’m sorry to say that this latest reboot/update is a failure on both counts (as well as the plot, which is full of holes and makes little sense, but as I said it’s unimportant).  Sure, the Turtles are largely as we remember them, with their defining characteristics still remaining, but they’re mostly just hollow shells of characters, all surface traits with little underneath.  It’s as if they cranked every character’s base personality up to 11 in order to compensate for the fact that the script has no time to stop and give them any depth.

Donatello isn’t just the brains of the outfit anymore, he’s decked out in gadgets, prattles like the worst geek stereotype and even wears glasses held together with tape.  Raphael mostly just shouts and growls, and while he constantly questions Leonardo’s leadership we never are given a clue as to why.  Michelangelo comes off slightly better, as his personality is probably the easiest to capture, but even his “party dude” attitude is so exaggerated it varies between annoying and creepy.  Leonardo, who of course has the least personality of the four, is completely unmemorable.  Splinter the rat is here too, but he’s been stripped of his connection to Shredder and either of the most well-known backstories for the character, giving him little weight and little to do.  The writers try to let April drive the story, but the way her backstory is woven into the film feels too forced and coincidental.  Also, the writers seem to be trying to say something with April’s career arc about how women are treated in the news industry, but they undo any potential feminist side to her story by having her faint upon first seeing the Turtles as if she’s a character from 1800’s.

The film’s action also leaves much to be desired.  It’s somewhat inevitable that a film with computer generated Turtles would overly rely on computer effects for the action, but even I was surprised at how over-the-top some of the action is.  There’s very little “ninja” in these Ninja Turtles, they’re much more like hulking bruisers.  Their entire redesign seems to be focused on bulk and power, from the loud thumps they make running around to the bulging, bodybuilder-esque muscles they all have.  (The entire design is unappealing to me, but I realize that some of that may be the nostalgia talking.)  For a movie with “Ninja” in the title, there’s little hand-to-hand combat in the film, and most of the action consists of Foot Clan soldiers (who are now styled as terrorists with automatic weapons rather than a clan of ninjas) shooting automatic weapons at the Turtles.  Shredder, when he finally appears, is more robot than warrior, and the movie’s biggest action sequence is a visually dazzling but hollow and ridiculous chase down a snowy mountain cliffside that somehow exists right outside of the city (close enough that the bottom of the cliff has sewer access right into NYC).  The one sequence that I remember containing any martial arts was entirely computer generated, looking more like a videogame than a film, and was over so fast that it’s hardly worth acknowledging.

The entire tone of the film feels wrong, both on its own and when taken as a part of the Ninja Turtle legacy.  I’m curious who the target audience for the film was thought to be.  Based on the general tone of the humor (which of course includes a fart joke) as well as the makeup of the audience in my theater the film is probably aimed at elementary school kids.  Yet it’s rated PG-13, has CG characters who look (to me) more scary than I would imagine would appeal to kids (and are more like 30-year-olds than teenagers), features an awful lot of gun violence, and has lines like Michelangelo’s upon first seeing April, “She’s so hot I can feel my shell tightening.”  It puts jokes in the oddest of places, ruining any chance at drama, so when the film tries to be serious it typically fails.  As a Ninja Turtle movie it flips wildly between wanting to do its own thing and trying to be an homage to the past.  One scene might reveal that Splinter learned the art of the Ninja by reading a silly pamplet he found in the sewer, disregarding any of the established histories of the characters, while on the other hand certain shots and events are obvious and deliberate nods and references to the previous movies.

But above all, it just doesn’t feel like a Ninja Turtle movie.  I’ve already said that they pretty much dropped the ninja aspect of the action, but the result of that is a movie that feels far less dark and shadowy than feels right.  It’s set in New York, yet it never taps into that New Yorker spirit that is so familiar to the Turtles, particularly as half of the film takes place in nondescript mountains.  The worst offense, though is that it lacks that feeling of family, of brothers who may not get along but who have each others’ backs when it counts, and of the father who guides them but allows them to find their own path.  The movie occasionally tries at this but the lines and moments that try to sell this feel unearned and in the end fall flat.

The cast brings very little to the table, although with this script that’s largely not their fault.  Megan Fox is inoffensive as April, playing the audience surrogate but never given much to do beyond that.  The Turtles and Splinter were all performed via motion capture, but Leonardo and Splinter had their voices redubbed by Johnny Knoxville and Tony Shalhoub, neither of whom bring anything interesting to the table.  Will Arnett tries pretty hard for laughs as April’s overwhelmed cameraman, and manages a few chuckles, while Whoopi Goldberg shows up for two scenes as April’s boss and is far too good to be in a movie like this.  Only William Fichtner makes much of an impression as the villainous Eric Sacks, hamming it up as much as possible but looking like he had fun doing it.

Despite all of that, the movie does have a few moments that I enjoyed, though they are mostly out of context randomness that succeeds at being funny.  When April first meets the Turtles, Raphael growls threateningly at her while Michelangelo in the background says, “He’s using his Batman voice!”  There’s also a fun scene in an elevator near the end of the film that feels very out of place and ruins the dramatic tone of the film’s climax, but out of context is amusing and the only thing that really feels fresh in the entire film.  It’d be easy for me to say that Michael Bay’s involvement in the film (his fingerprints are all over it, despite it actually being directed by Jonathan Liebesman) ruined it, but perhaps the truth is simply that the world has moved on from a time when the Turtles could fit in.  The 80’s and 90’s were the perfect era for the Turtles, which hovered right at that intersection between “cool” and “nerdy” in order to have wide appeal.  These days, the definition of those two terms has shifted so radically that there may not be a place for the Turtles anymore.  However, Judging by the film’s box office performance and the reaction of the kids in my audience, there will always be a place for dumb, loud spectacles cashing in on familiar characters, even if you have to strip the soul out of the source material in order to do it.  In a time when comic book movies can be dramatic and emotional or creative and hilarious or both, it’s a shame to see some movies aiming at the lowest common denominator and still finding a way to succeed.

C-