Before reading everything below, which I know is a lot, I’m going to just give you my rating for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and if you really want to read more about it, please continue.

Here’s the Rating, in bold is the second option after the red rating.

Spend all your time and money at the theater and buy on DVD/Blu-Ray/Combo
Head to the theater with friends a few times to view
Worth a watch, once in the theater
Wait for the DVD/Blu-ray to come out to buy
Worth spending $2.50 on DVD release day to rent
Wait for Redbox Release for $1.27
Buy once hits the Wal-mart $5 bin
Wait for Redbox free rental code and rent
Don’t waste your time. Really.

Back in 1990 I was 8 years old, my mom took me to see Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in the theater. I was more excited than you could imagine, seeing my turtles as real life characters, moving and interacting with humans in real life! It was amazing, the facial movements and the ninja skills they provided when beating down the foot clan all made this film an instant classic.

A year later, excited again, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze was released. Again, my mother took me to see this one, there was much more on screen turtle action, new bad guys and even a SUPER Shredder. Bringing more to the turtle action, was Vanilla Ice with his Ninja Rap song when the turtles busted in on his show.

It took two more years until a 3rd turtle movie was released, the turtles found themselves traveling through time back to ancient Japan to learn to become one with the art of the ninja.

Over 2 decades later, the turtles return to the big screen in the reboot, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Expectations were low already, based mostly on the trailer and screenshots of the turtles. I’ll admit that Shredder did look pretty cool in the trailer and that was really my only true excitement was to see him in action.

Please keep in mind that if you read any further, I WILL be giving away plot details, information and full SPOILER!

The movie started out pretty typical of of a TMNT movie, April O’Neil is the main focus, reporter for channel 6 news who is stuck on lame exercise reports and looking for action. Her camera man, Vernon, played by Will Arnett, was pleasant to see. He brought a lot more than Megan Fox, that’s for sure. So, April is looking for adventure and ends up finding it. She ends up at a shipping yard where the Foot Clan is and they’re up to no good. Armed with her camera phone, April notices a figure taking down the bad guys and she tries to capture it.

This is the first time you see one of the turtles, shortly after this, April heads up to a roof after a few other events and catches the turtles giving eachother high fives and gloating about how “bad ass” they are.

The turtles come off as very threatening and offensive, while Michelangelo is quite the typical horny teenager who flirts with April right from the get-go.

Carrying on, the story progresses into almost nothing. The shredder has no back story, and the turtles origin has completely changed.

*BIG SPOILER AHEAD*

The turtle origin originally was that Master Splinter was human, he found the turtles in the sewer and they were in the mutagen and he raised them after he was also exposed to the same toxic goo turning him into a giant rat. In this case, the turtles were actually test subjects for April’s father. April was a child and they were basically her pets. She would feed them pizza and take care of them while her father would experiment on them. There was also a rat there, a rat that later became Splinter.

Shredder and Splinter had no past. They didn’t even know eachother, let alone hangout at the same dojo together. VERY disappointing.

The story is that Shredder is attempting to destroy the city with a chemical agent that Eric Sacks(April’s fathers partner) has a cure for that will make him rich beyond rich and the turtles try to put a stop to this.

After what seemed like almost an hour or more of the turtles being beat down I couldn’t take much more, this was a movie that had I no issues getting up to get a refill on my drink or using the restroom because I felt I wasn’t going to miss much. Megan Fox gave a poor performance, sometimes it felt like she was just handed the script right before filming. The turtles themselves were bearable, at least physically.

Michelangelo, one of the fan favorites, was probably the most annoying character in the movie. He was very “hip hoppy” and had a more urban attitude instead of the more crowd pleasing surfer image he originally had. Leonardo and Raphael were the most tolerable, at eachothers throats at some points fighting like brothers do. Donetello, well.. Donnie was a complete nerd, equipped with broken tapped up glasses and a proton packs worth of equipment, it made it hard to believe he was as agile as he was.

Shredder was by far the most impressive character. Although the story was inconsistent with the original turtle lore, he was still really cool looking. He was a giant with magnetic shards that would fly out and return instantly, and even though he was inside this large suit he was still more than capable of kicking butt ninja style.

Over all, this movie was poor. There was a lot of action, but the “doom and gloom” that surrounded the film was almost unbearable at times. If you were a fan of The Dark Knight Rises, then you will most likely enjoy this film. A film where everything seems hopeless and no one can win. Voice acting was great, Leonardo, voiced by Johnny Knoxville, and Alan Ritchson as Raphael really brought their A game and even Will Arnett was excellent in his role as the perverted Vernon Fenwick while Megan Fox gave another D rated acting performance as April O’Neil.