Director: Jonathan Liebesman
Writers: Josh Appelbaum, Andre Nemec, Evan Daugherty
Cast: Megan Fox, Will Arnett, William Fichtner, Tohoru Masamune, Whoopi Goldberg, Johnny Knoxville, Tony Shalhoub, Alan Ritchson, Noel Fisher, Jeremy Howard, Pete Ploszek, Danny Woodburn
Runtime: 101 mins.
2014
In response to [Michael Bay's announcement about creative changes in the film], actor Robbie Rist, who voiced Michelangelo in the first three films, wrote to Bay accusing him of "sodomizing" the franchise. Rist later remarked that he could have been out of line since Bay makes more money than he does.
-Wikipedia
Somewhere, in the darkest stickiest corridors of adolescence, a full-time Minecraft player and habitual masturbator has mustered up the list of his (because it is inevitably a he) ten favorite movies--Transformers: Age of Extinction, The Amazing Spider-Man, The Dark Knight, etc.--and from these has logically (because everything must be logical) determined the formula for the most perfect Ninja Turtles movie imaginable, for that is the intellectual property nearest and dearest to his heart, and he feels as if the special effects in the trilogy of extant Turtles films are not realistic enough (because the greatest value an action film can have is realism). From this hypothetical basement-dwelling woman-hating travesty of a subconsciousness, Jonathan Liebesman's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is born.
One more gem from Wikipedia before we get into this:
In mid-February 2013, actress Megan Fox was reported to be cast as April O'Neil, marking her first collaboration with Bay since her remark comparing him to Adolf Hitler.
I've split this commentary into four chapters, in honor of the four titular turtles.
1. Performance: Laying an Egg
Honestly, can you really blame any of the actors in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for turning in a crap performance?
Sure, Megan Fox is woefully miscast, and the characterization of April O'Neil as a reporter striving to be taken seriously ends up jarring incongruously with the fact that nobody takes Megan Fox seriously. But you know what? She's actually trying! Megan Fox puts more effort into her portrayal of O'Neil than anything else I've seen her attempt, and maybe that becomes depressing when you note that the movie is far more concerned about her ass than her (made explicit in a scene where Will Arnett's character lets her do something perilous just so he can stare at her butt), but hey! But...hey...
Sure, Will Arnett is playing yet another variation of his creepy-sex-crazed-incompetent-loser persona, a version that loses all humor as the film deprives him of the irony he needs for this schtick to succeed, which becomes depressing as we notice the wrinkles under his eyes deepen with each new lazy sexist line he is contractually obligated to deliver. But that just makes him well-cast!
Sure, William Fichtner is visibly bored with every moment he spends onscreen, clearly typecast for his sinister features, yet in a role that requires him to appear benevolent if the movie's attempt at suspense is going to function. But he lends... something like gravitas.
Sure, Tony Shalhoub is Splinter, I guess?
Sure, the Turtles sound like a ten-year-old sociopath's approximate understanding of teenagers, what with their banter and their fart jokes and their casual sexism. Sure they deliver their dialogue with the sensitive pacing of Microsoft Sam and overlap each other in a barefaced unintentional parody of brotherhood and camaraderie. Sure it's off-putting to watch Megan Fox grin mindlessly at an eight foot tall anthropomorphic turtle telling her that he is going to have sex with her as if it is "adorable." Sure. Sure. SURE. SURE. SURE.
2. Effects: Cowabombast
The blocking for every Turtles scene is erratic to the point that it must have been plotted out by a team of CGI designers selected expressly for their common crippling ADHD. Just as the brothers' dialogue overlaps in such a cadence as to be insensible, they hop about scenes in either a grotesque parody of youth or a grotesque parody of computer generated images, I can't tell which. It's like every time someone wants to say something they have to shove someone else into a wall or do a triple backflip over April O'Neil before they can do so. Do you really suspect your audience's attention spans are so short, Liebesman and Co.? I don't know. Maybe they are.
The action scenes are just the same, but cranked up to twelve. No action has weight, and everyone is an imbecile. Someone sticks a blinking glowing rectangle to a wall and an offscreen voice shouts, "It's a bomb!" Someone shoots a Turtle to no effect and the Turtle yells, "Bullets don't work on us!" A cliff is approaching and someone looks at a screen and shouts, "These readings show a cliff approaching!" I suppose this overexplaining is somewhat justified, considering that the frenetic staging of the action sequences, despite a surprising proliferation of long shots, entirely alienate principles such as "spatial awareness" and "action/reaction." Objects whizz about the screen like a simulation of a pinball machine that the computer plays by itself. It's somewhat comforting, really. The utter lack of stakes, suspense, or sense means the explosions and flips and flops all wash over you like a warm bath. You are left bereft, physically unable to engage with anything on the screen, as if in a waking dream.
The effects themselves are a bit fascinating, in a gawky uncanny valley sort of way, but the designs of the Turtles and Splinter are some of the most butt ugly things I've ever seen.
3. Tone: Winky Winky Cheese and Stinky
IT'S ALMOST LIKE WE'RE GENETICALLY MODIFIED NOT-YET-ADULT MARTIAL ARTS STUDENTS OF THE CHELONIAN VARIETY.
SO YOU'RE SAYING YOU ARE MUTANT...TEENAGE...TURTLE...NINJAS?
That wasn't even a huge exaggeration of an exchange that continually crops up throughout this movie. Try this one on for size:
HEY MIKEY REMEMBER THAT WORD I TOLD YOU TO NEVER EVER EVER SAY TEN YEARS AGO.
YEAH RAPH.
OKAY WELL NOW MIGHT BE THE TIME TO SAY IT.
............COWABUNGA!!!!!!!!
Look. Screenwriters. I get that you're ashamed of your property. I get that you have the studio breathing down your neck. I get that you're being browbeaten in the media by the voice actor for the 1990 iteration of Michelangelo. But can you really call this lame attempt at tongue-in-cheek cleverness any sort of solution?
There has been a disturbing trend of lazy self-awareness surfacing in genre films recently. Self-awareness has always been a part of our cinematic lexicon (look at something like Buster Keaton's 1924 film Sherlock Jr.). But this particular concoction of metafiction and irony is one that was arguably given life by Scream in 1996. Scream is a well-crafted movie (and one of the first movies I reviewed!), but it has issued forth an era where irony is an excuse, or a stopgap shoved where character and story should flow. This has become a particular problem in the last decade, when our reboot frenzy has found filmmaker and screenwriter alike scrambling to find value in properties that have long since become irrelevant, or that were already perfected several decades past. Thus a very specific tone is born, one of not-quite-commentary, not-quite-homage, not-quite-anything at all.
Think of how Jurassic World has its characters voice things like, "I thought the original park was more pure, man."
Think of the way the recent Fantastic Four movie ends will the characters standing around in front of a railing, jabberjawing about how "Hey we should have a name." "Naww that's silly." "Why is it silly we did some pretty fantastic things." Wait........say that again." "We did some pretty...fantastic...things?" "*grins*".
Think of every single cringeworthy Geico advertisement of the past five years.
I'm telling you right now that culture is eating itself. We're living in a law of diminishing returns, and it's getting to the point that our media isn't going to be saying anything because it'll have its own tail stuffed in its mouth. 2014's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is $125 million wankery, and it's not going away. In fact, we are blessed to have Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 coming next June.
The 1990 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles might not be cinematic gold, but at least there were moments of true joy rather than the nasty simulacrum Bay and Liebesman are spoonfeeding us.
4. Concluding Thoughts: Beggars Can't Be Sewers
I haven't even got to talking about the plot, the way the Foot Clan is casually cast aside as ancillary, or the way April O'Neil must be inelegantly inserted into the Turtles' origin story (can't people just meet each other and have relationships for interpersonal reasons?), or the way the finale is an exact carbon copy replica of the no-more-impressive finale of The Amazing Spider-Man.
After watching the movie someone asked me my takeaway. I told them it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.
Why did I say that??
To what supposed standard am I holding this movie that allows it to compare favorably? Certainly not a standard that doesn't require April O'Neil to be constantly and perfunctorily objectified. Certainly not a standard that discourages the only attempt at an emotional moment between the characters to be immediately undercut by a dumb gag. Certainly not a standard that thinks it's stupid for the Turtles to learn the art of ninjitsu through a bunch of... what was it... martial arts booklets? I can't even remember.
There is perhaps a single good scene in the entire film. The Turtles are rushing to their imminent climactic conflict on the tiptop of a skyscraper. They run into the building and pile into an elevator. The following shot is a continuous take of them standing together, tensed for battle, as the elevator commences its interminable climb. After a few beats of tension, boredom sets in, and Mikey begins beatboxing and using his nunchucks as a percussive instrument. Each brother joins the beat in turn, until they're all making music together, existing in their camaraderie for a moment before they enter the battlefield.
This is the sort of joy I was referring to above, and you know what it took? No flashy camerawork, no explosions, no shots of Megan Fox's butt, no nonsense about magic blood. All it took was one continuous shot, a static camera, simple blocking, meaningful characterization, and a sense of genuine fun.
What we got instead was 101 minutes of striving to check all the boxes that the Turtles' target demographic are supposed to want.
0 / 5 BLOBS
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