Friday, April 10, 2015

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014)

Yet another restart of a film series based on the comics by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird.  This one follows three animated TV series, an anime series and a live action TV Series, not to mention three live action films from the 1990's and an animated feature from 2007.

This time out we get the whole discovery of the turtles by reporter April O'Neil and her camera man Vern Fenwick. Their creation ties back to work April's dead father had been doing with villain of the piece Eric Sachs, a scientist who had been raised by the evil Shredder. It seems that Sachs and Shredder want to use a version of the mutating formula that changed the turtles on the population of New York so that they can extort the antidote from them.

I had to sit and think long and hard about whether or not to write this film up and decided to to do so because once you get past the flaws the film is pretty good.

The problems that made me hesitate are -first- the fact that outside of one fight, the film is rather static for the first half hour as April runs around trying to prove the foot clan story.Its  not bad but lets face it April is not the most exciting of characters and even with Megan Fox (who is given porn star looks here) playing her interest wanes real fast.

The second problem is that some of the film, and especially Shredder is too much computer generated. While I know Splinter and the Turtles were all done motion capture, they genuinely look real. Shredder doesn't and it hurts the film.

On the other hand once we really get to the turtles, once the film gets moving the film becomes a great slam bang action film. There are spectacular set pieces and funny lines. We have great characters doing greatly heroic things and we are all better for it.

Watching the film I was like "this makes no sense but damn its fun"

Its that sense of fun that makes me want to recommend this.

Turn your brain off and just go with it. This is great action and if you like slam bang action you have to give this a shot.

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