Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Review

As a product of the 1980's I was very much in love with the Ninja Turtles as a kid. There have been three live action Ninja Turtles movies and one CGI animated movie over the years, but none of them have captured the fun of the cartoon that ran from 1987-1996. Nickelodeon Movies decided to try a reboot after the rise in popularity of their current animated TV show. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014) was far from good, but I think it depicted the Turtles better than previous big screen appearances.

The city is in need of heroes. Darkness has settled over New York City as Shredder (Tohoru Masamune) and his evil Foot Clan have an iron grip on everything from the police to the politicians. The future looks grim until four unlikely outcast brothers rise from the sewers and discover their destiny as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Leonardo (Johnny Knoxville), Donatello (Jeremy Howard), Raphael (Alan Ritchson), and Michelangelo (Noel Fisher) must work with fearless reporter April O'Neil (Megan Fox) and her wise-cracking cameraman Vern Fenwick (Will Arnett) to save the city and unravel Shredder's diabolical plan.

When the trailer for Ninja Turtles came out the internet exploded with irate protests that Michael Bay was directing, and thus would allegedly ruin, another well loved 80's cartoon show. Let's set the records straight; Michael Bay only produced Ninja Turtles. There wasn't nearly enough gratuitous action or explosions in this movie to be a Michael Bay movie. If you want to rage against a director for this movie, you must aim your fury at Jonathan Liebesman, who is known for other such atrocities as Battle: Los Angeles and Wrath of the Titans.

Ninja Turtles has a long history of being Ninja Turtles. It's a pretty simple, if ridiculous, premise. You've got four mutant turtles who were taught Ninjutsu by a rat, and now they fight the evil Shredder and the Foot Clan. If you deviate too much from that, it won't be Ninja Turtles. There were some creative liberties taken in their original story which started to rub me the wrong way, but I could see why it was done; it gave the Turtles and April O'Neil a reason to work together early in the movie. Everything else remains pretty true to the source material; the Turtles looks really good and they were depicted well. They skateboard, cracks jokes, invent wacky gadgets, love pizza, use martial arts to fight bad guys, and say things like "cowabunga, dude."

The human characters were probably the worst part of the movie. Megan Fox is not a good actress; she's good at looking hot, but she doesn't really do that here. Will Arnett is good at being funny, and he wasn't. Shredder is technically a human character, but he's flat and has no personality. He's just a bad guy in a crazy bladed robot armor suit who is bad for the sake of being bad. Of course they had to make him huge and have a mechanical suit because Turtles are, like, eight feet tall or something and can knock anyone out easily. If the Turtles were more human size, Shredder's superfluous armor wouldn't have been necessary. It was pretty cool, but it made the character less interesting.

The end of story rips off end of The Amazing Spider-Man. They are so ridiculously similar you can't help but wonder if someone got sued. Overall the story is pretty weak, but it felt like the kind of story and plot you'd see in the cartoon show. It's simple, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, and it shows us the characters fighting one another. Really, what else do you want? Much-loved as the Turtles are, they aren't exactly complex characters. This movie felt like I was watching a long cartoon show. It felt more like the classic cartoon than the previous movies did. Was it good? No way! But I thought it was fun, and it made me want to eat a frozen pizza while sitting on the floor in front of the TV in my pajamas and watch Ninja Turtles like I did when I was six. That's got to say something about how this Ninja Turtles movie manages to tap into the nostalgia of the 1980's cartoon show, and for that I must give this movie props.

This rendition of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is better than I expected it to be, but still not as good as I had hoped. The story is weak and seems to plagiarize other blockbusters toward the end, the human characters are terrible and uninteresting, the Turtles themselves were great and couldn't have been better, the special effects weren't bad, and the action scenes were pretty good. Overall it felt more like the classic 1980's cartoon than any of the previous big screen appearances, but still wasn't a great movie. It lies in the awkward realm of not being good enough to recommend but still not so bad as to avoid completely. Kids are going to enjoy it a lot, and if your kids do, this is worth getting a copy of. Otherwise it's a renter, and then only if you're already a fan of Ninja Turtles.

What 1980's cartoon would you like to see a good big screen adaptation of? Comment below and tell me about it!

The Island Movie Review

Director Michael Bay is notorious for making movies with lots of high intensity action and tons of special effects. Not all of his movies are good; in fact some are just flat out stupid. Even when the movie is ridiculous and hard to take seriously, it cannot be said that the action isn't awesome. Somehow I missed the release of The Island (2005). I've had several people recommend it to me in the past few weeks, so I made sure to see it. It's pretty interesting for a Michael Bay movie.

Lincoln Six-Echo (Ewan McGregor) is a resident of a seemingly Utopian, but contained, facility in the year 2019. Like all of the inhabitants of this carefully controlled environment, Lincoln hopes to be chosen to go to "The Island," reportedly the last uncontaminated spot on the planet. But Lincoln soon discovers that everything is not what it appears to be. He makes a daring escape with a beautiful fellow resident named Jordan Two-Delta (Scarlett Johansson). The two are relentlessly pursued by the facility's administrator, Dr. Bernard Merrick (Sean Bean), and his hired mercenaries. Lincoln and Jordan race to find help and protection in a world they know nothing about.

Surely you've seen a Michael Bay movie before. Transformers, Armageddon, and Pearl Harbor probably come to mind. If you've seen these movies then you already know they are special effects intensive, feature lots of action, and an uncommonly high number of explosions. That's basically the main reasons to watch a Michael Bay movie. The man is a genius when it comes to orchestrating beautiful pyrotechnic stunts.

In The Island, however, it's almost like he's done a double feature of some sort. The first part of the movie is similar to the "escape from paradise" movies that were popular in the 1960's and 70's, like Logan's Run or Fahrenheit 451. It acts as a creepy, yet relatively calm, science fiction parable, which later shifts into a high-tech adrenaline-pumping action movie. The second half is more like a Michael Bay movie. Both "halves" of the movie are great fun individually, but they contrast each other so much in terms of pacing, theme, and tone that I'm not sure if they work well together. It's almost like watching a double feature with the same cast.

The Utopian facility at the beginning of the movie is not terribly complicated to figure out. The inhabitants are childlike and blissful, all except for the few troublesome characters like Lincoln who wants bacon for breakfast but is given oatmeal. This causes him develop something that all closed systems fear, curiosity. McGregor and Johansson do a phenomenal job of playing characters raised to be docile, obedient, and frankly not very bright. It's great to see how Bay gradually thrusts upon them carefully controlled amounts of knowledge which both moves the plot forward and shows the characters losing their illusions.

The second part of the movie is an insane series of chase scenes by train, car, and hover-cycle, that showcase some stellar special effects with absurd urgency. How our heroes discover the underlying truth about their world while moving so fast is beyond me. Maybe people in the facility aren't as slow witted as we thought. Car chases on highways are difficult to film, but Michael Bay has a knack for filming great chase scenes. There are a good number of crashes, explosions, and cliffhangers which by every right should have killed everyone involved. Yet our heroes escape and keep going. How? I have no idea. But it was really fun and exciting to watch!

I didn't feel like The Island draws much of a conclusive ending. The climax of the film certainly fulfills the requirements of the second half of the story, but it leaves questions raised in the first half unanswered. We get a satisfactory ending to all the action, but it's as if the movie completely forgot about the first half. That's part of the reason why I think each half of the movie is good, but they don't quite work well together.

The Island is a fun movie. It's got lots of crazy action, some good acting, reasonably decent writing, good directing, and a story that is as illogical and full of plot holes as any other Michael Bay movie. If you're looking for something deep and intellectually stimulating, you shouldn't bother with a Michael Bay movie. The Island was fun and exciting. That's all it is, and that's what Michael Bay is good at. Like any good sci-fi movie, The Island should cause you to reflect on contemporary issues. If you don't think of something like stem-cell research or government monitoring, you might be missing one of the few intellectually stimulating bits of The Island. I recommend seeing this movie; it's not a classic for the ages, but it's achieves what it sets out to do. I think it might even be worth owning a copy for the next time you're in the mood for a crazy action movie.

What's your favorite "escape from paradise" movie? I kind of liked Logan's Run. Comment below and tell me about yours!