Our review for 2014’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is up! Check out what Axalon thinks in this spoiler-free review of the latest movie in the franchise. The Ninja Turtles have once again risen from the sewers!

Going into Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (referred to from here on as a simple TMNT) I wasn’t sure what to expect or even what I wanted aside from being entertained, a reasonable request from most films I think. I really had no baggage going in. In regards to TMNT I remember fairly little from the old popular cartoon and never read any of the comics. What I remember most about them came from the live-action 90’s movies, so I had to rely on that as a frame of reference.

(For more on that particular topic feel free to check out what my fellow contributors at Enthusiacs thought of the first movie here.)

In other words I had very little childhood nostalgia to ruin or look back upon fondly in this regard. Not because I didn’t like TMNT in general, since I did, but just from lack of experience with it. What few trailers I saw led me to believe this was going to be a more serious take on the turtles, with the exception of Michelangelo, so I had prepared for the darker and edgier atmosphere.

I was wrong. Though there are serious and occasionally tense moments in the film, just enough to make it more serious than say, Guardians of the Galaxy featuring a talking tree and raccoon.  There were also a fair amount of well timed and genuinely funny moments as well.

2014’s TMNT actually isn’t all that bad. Mostly. Its not the cinematic apocalypse. It’s not even the worst TMNT movie ever made. Does it get absurd at times? Absolutely. It’s a movie about pizza-loving mutated ninja turtle teenagers who are raised by a mutant rat in the sewers and fight a guy in spiky armor. What else did you expect? That’s probably not what you thought about when I said absurd, so I’ll elaborate a bit.

There are many cliches, a fair amount of cheese, and they just run with it. Villains are blatantly evil, plans are laid out, big final battle sequence, a fairly simple plot, the works. It’s a movie that, when it wants to have fun, does have fun with it. If only it chose to have a bit more fun at times.

I found the four turtle characters easily distinguishable from each other, both in personality and in appearance. Each turtle looks different enough that they could be comprehended in the midst of whatever action scene they found themselves in, and the effects work done makes them very believable as four mutated turtle ninja people, helped by motion capture and voice work of course. In fact, most of the action scenes I could tell what was going on and who was fighting who. Those few scenes where it was hard to make out the characters made sense within the context of the film itself. All the turtle personalities seemed in sync with what I remembered. Played with a bit differently at times, but the core of it all is still there.

In fact, this is probably the major problem with the film. Not that the characters are recognizable, that’s a good thing, but that there wasn’t enough time spent on them. Some of this is probably due to the run time. Clocking in at one hour and 45 minutes the movie has to rush everything through to completion. The origin of the turtles, their nemesis, the plot, the action scenes, the comedy, etc. A few more scenes showing the turtles hanging out and having fun and bonding (like the elevator clip for those who have seen it and know what I’m talking about) would have gone a long way. Same goes for Splinter’s relationship with the turtles as well.

The other cast members fill their roles more or less adequately. Megan Fox as reporter April O’ Neil, William Fichtner as businessman Robert Sacks, and Will Arnett as the cameraman are all okay. Just okay. They move the plot along at best. The human element is definitely weaker than the turtles themselves. How they’re all connected to the turtles also feels a bit rushed and I proudly admit wearing nostalgia goggles when I say I liked the original a bit better in this regard. I would have preferred a bit less April and a bit more turtles though. It isn’t on the level of the earlier Transformers movies, where humans seem to supplant the actual robots half the time, but as I said before, more scenes with Splinter and the turtles would have been for the better. More of the Shredder would have been good too. I love villains and although he was menacing and had some good action scenes he was a bit lackluster in his motives.  Granted this isn’t a crime committed solely by this current iteration of the franchise, but it doesn’t stop me from wanting a bit more. In essence, any scene that didn’t involve the turtles wasn’t as good.

Like the turtles themselves, there is potential here. Potential not yet fully realized, and something the people who made this film may not fully realize. It’s buried somewhere beneath the CGI, action scenes and the basic plot.

In the end, this is a turtles film meant for a new generation. It isn’t perfect by any means, but does an admirable job of updating the four while also sticking to their earlier roots. The plot is simplistic, but then again so was the plot for the other films. Kids will love it. The ones in the theater with me certainly seemed to like it.

A thing to remember going in is that this is a movie made for kids. There were many times when I caught myself thinking “Well that was just stupid.”  But then I thought back to elements of the older films and realized there was some silliness and stupidity going on there as well that I hadn’t caught when I was much younger. It’s summer popcorn fare.

I think a great way to approach this—if you’re a jaded adult like myself—is to view this in the original light the turtles were made in: a self-referencing yet entertaining parody of tropes and cliches. If nothing else ,this has re-kindled my interest in TMNT.

Overall I rate this as Fairly Good — 3/5.

Had the plot been woven a bit better the movie would have benefited a bit more. As it is the four turtles are just enough to make this entertaining while carrying and dragging the rest of the movie on their collective shoulders. It’s not so great that it will be the best movie of the summer, yet not so terrible that it deserves being branded as the worst in the series.