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 Lego Movie Review

I was so excited for The Lego Movie (2014) when I saw the trailer for it. It looked hilarious. I could see it either being an incredible, fun animated movie or a hundred-minute long commercial for toy products. This movie not only met my highest hopes, but it exceeded my expectations by a lot!

Emmet (Chris Pratt) is an unremarkable construction worker who is perfectly happy with his settled existence as an ordinary citizen of the metropolis of Bricksburg. The plastic world is run by the evil Lord Business (Will Ferrell). Everything is monotonous and routine, but no one complains because no one knows any different. Things change when Emmet follows a mysterious figure named Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks) and discovers an ancient artifact known as the Piece of Resistance. According to the prophecy, this makes Emmet "The Special." After escaping Lord Business's henchman, Bad Cop (Liam Neeson), the two meet up with Vitruvius (Morgan Freeman) an old wizard to determine Emmet's role in stopping Lord Business's evil plans. They meet up with other Master Builders including Batman (Will Arnett), Uni-Kitty (Alison Brie), Metal Beard the Pirate (Nick Offerman), and Benny the 1980-something space guy (Charlie Day) to construct a plan to save the entire Lego world from Lord Business's secret weapon, The Kragle.

The Lego Movie was written and directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller. These are the geniuses who wrote and directed the first Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, which I absolutely loved. Lord and Miller have excellent talent for writing an interesting and fun story, capturing high energy in their camera work, a great sense of comedic timing, and animating some very expressive characters. All of that is present in this movie, too.

The animation for The Lego Movie is absolutely phenomenal. Literally everything is made out of Lego pieces; people, buildings, cars, props, fire, explosions, water, fog, etc. What's amazing is, I don't think there were many Lego pieces used in the movie that don't actually exist in real life. The animation is CGI, but the movement is made to resemble stop motion animation. The characters moved like Lego figures; their arms could only move on one axis, they don't have knees, and they don't have articulate hands. All that made the movie feel much more tactile and realistic. They even got the texture of the Lego pieces spot on. Some are shiny and smooth, others are more rough and don't reflect the light as well, you can see the plastic seam leftover from plastic mold, you can even see slight tooth marks on some old pieces. You know you tried to unstick two stubborn Lego blocks by prying them apart with your teeth as a kid. Don't deny it. It looks for all the world like a camera zoomed in on an elaborately build Lego set. Here's a clip to help illustrate:

One of the neat things about The Lego Movie is that it captures feel of the Lego toys. There is a remarkably fun feeling of creating, inventing, and self-expression that is laced throughout the movie. It even encapsulates the manic feeling of trying to build something out of Lego blocks. In one scene, the newly assembled team is trying to make an escape vehicle as fast as possible. They are constantly shouting things like, "If anybody has black parts, I need them, okay?" "Use the yellow bricks." "No, it has to look this way!" "Does anyone know what this is and do you need it?" "We should use wings and rocket boosters." It sounds exactly like my friends and I did when we were playing with Lego. There are lots of mismatched characters and sets, just like you would have with a collection of different Lego sets. Dumbledore and Gandalf get annoyed when they are mistaken for each other, Michelangelo, the artist, is juxtaposed with Michelangelo the Ninja Turtle, and there are several cameos by actors portraying either themselves or characters they have played, not the least of which includes Shaquille O'Neal. It's simply amazing how the feeling of playing with Lego was incorporated into the movie! 

Part of what makes The Lego Movie so interesting is the layers of theme. On the surface it looks like a brightly colored fun light-hearted kids movie. Lord and Miller skillfully balance an impressive array of narrative and thematic spinning plates; the tension between following instructions and going your own way is at the heart of this movie. It also tackles ideas like order and chaos, adults and children, practicality and magic, the real and the imaginary. Yet it presents it in a laugh-a-minute, kid-friendly way that will entertain kid viewers and intrigue adult viewers. It's almost like Toy Story had it been written by Mel Brooks after reading George Orwell's 1984. 

The Lego Movie completely blew me away. I was hoping for something good, but hadn't dared to expect something this well made. Just as it's recurring musical number suggest, "Everything is Awesome" and there really isn't a better word for it. The characters are fun, the animation is exceptional, the setting was highly creative, the themes were multi-layered and interesting, and the humor was right up my alley.  I honestly can't say anything bad about this movie. It's got a 96% on Rotten Tomatoes, for goodness sake! Go watch this in theaters; it's well worth ticket price. It's the kind of film we want to encourage Hollywood to keep making. I wasn't even halfway done with the movie before I decided I had to get a copy on blu-ray when it becomes available.

This was easily the best movie based on a toy product that I can think of. Can you think of another one that was good? Which toy based movie was the worst? Comment below and tell me all about it!

The Secret World of Arrietty Movie Review

There isn't a whole lot of anime that I can honestly say I enjoy. So when it is brought up while talking to fellow geeks, I have to talk about the movies made by Studio Ghibli. I haven't seen all of their movies, but the ones I have seen are incredible. Studio Ghibli is kind of like the Walt Disney of Japan in that the Japanese studio makes incredible animated feature films. In 2010, Studio Ghibli's sixteenth film, The Secret World of Arrietty, was released and I've just now got around to seeing it.

 Based on British writer Mary Norton's children's book The Borrowers, the film is about fourteen-year-old Arrietty Clock (Bridgit Mendler). She is a Borrower; four-inch-tall people who live anonymously within the walls of a human family's residence, borrowing simple items to make their home. Arrietty lives with her father Pod (Will Arnett) and mother Homily (Amy Poehler). Arrietty is excited to go on her first "borrowing" trip where she'll help Pod gather supplies from the larger house. The Clock family is nervous about the new twelve-year-old boy Shawn (David Henrie) who has moved in to the house recently. When Pod and Arrietty are seen  by Shawn they fear they may have to move to a safer home. When Shawn attempt to befriend Arrietty, he makes a mess of things and inadvertently draws the attention of the house's caretaker Haru (Carol Burnett), who has been suspicious of the existence of "little people" for years.

I've seen other versions of The Borrowers. There was a TV series starring Ian Holm, an action-based movie starring John Goodman, and a television released movie starring The Doctor Christopher Eccleston. The Secret World of Arrietty is probably the best version I've seen to date. There is a different set of voice actors for the Japanese, United Kingdom, and United States dubbing; I've listed the United States cast only because that's the one I happened to see.

The color and proportions are incredible!

As usual Studio Ghibli's art style was remarkable! It's visually lush and beautifully detailed. You could pause the move at just about any point and admire that one frame for all the detailed beauty and heart that went into it. I'm partly colorblind and even I thought the greens used to color the verdant grass was gorgeous. The colors are beautiful and the imagery is beautiful to see.

One of the amazing details in the animation was how realistic the physics were. To a tiny human, a portion of water, for example, will move differently. A Borrower would drink a drop of water instead of a eight ounces. Thus to Arrietty, a drop of water will loom and drip like syrup. The sounds of a ticking clock reverberates immensely, and something like tissue paper is large and stiff. Other versions of The Borrowers have tried to capture the difference that size would have on normal physics, but I don't think any of them has done it as remarkably well as this one. The camera work also helps illustrate the size difference. The scenes with the Borrowers use wide angles from low angles to capture the enormity of the house from their perspective. The animators are always very careful about being consistent with size when a borrower and a human are interacting; other versions aren't always so meticulous about that detail. It causes the difference in size to be more believable.

The movie moves a bit slower than I expected, but it is paced perfectly. The story unfolds gradually and progresses evenly. That's not to say there is no action or that it's a slow movie. Most other versions of The Borrowers are fast paced so that the kid viewers who have a presumably short attention span won't get bored. This results in an underdeveloped story that moves at a dizzying pace. It may bore some viewers under the age of four, but I think The Secret World of Arrietty is a great way to help young kids appreciate well made films that are not bombastically over-the-top and moves at a rushed paced.

The Secret World of Arrietty is an outstanding movie, as has been my experience with other Studio Ghibli films. It doesn't have the epic scale of Spirited Away or Princess Mononoke and the seemingly "kid-friendly" vibe may put off some adult viewers. Even if you are an adult I recommend watching this film. It's absolutely beautiful to behold and is impeccably paced and its drama is perfectly developed. It's also good to see an adventure movie with a strong female protagonist. I think The Secret World of Arrietty is worth owning on Blu-Ray and watching often.

Do you have a favorite Studio Ghibli movie? Which one is it and why? Comment below and tell me all about it!