Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014) - Actually better than I expected

Okay, so I didn’t love the remake of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but I was reasonably surprised.  I’m one of the original group of Turtle fans who enjoyed the cartoon in the eighties and the live action (fun!) film in 1990.  Therefore, when I heard that Michael Bay had his fingers in the remake, my hopes weren’t high (look what he did to the Transformers franchise!).

Yes, Bay’s fingerprints are visible here and there during the film, but, luckily, his input is relatively fleeting.  I guess I have to keep comparing the film to Transformers – both have been sold on having giant computer-generated characters as central to the story.  And, whereas Optimus Prime and co seem to blur into one, making action scenes almost impossible to watch, on the whole I was happy with the CGI turtles.  The fight scenes looked pretty realistic and there was only one (overly long) snowy chase scene in the final act which kind of looked a little too CGI for my liking.

However, as with Transformers, the film tries to balance the story between the titular heroes and the human characters.  It’s not until roughly the half hour mark do we really get to meet our four shelled green stars.  Many people already hate Megan Fox, so I was pretty surprised that she even got the part as the turtles’ friend April O’Neil.  I never hated her to begin with, but I’d describe her performance as ‘functional.’

The turtles themselves are fun to watch, but I was a little surprised at how miserable their (giant rat) mentor ‘Splinter’ seemed to be.  In the cartoon he was much more loving and paternal towards the turtles.  Here, he just seemed to have a go at them half the time (okay, he warms up, but still I thought he was overly harsh).

You may or may not know (I did!) that William Fichtner was originally cast as the turtles’ nemesis ‘Shredder.’ The fans went mental (yeah, I didn’t agree with the casting choice either) and a second actor was brought in as the ‘main’ villain and some parts of the film reshot to reflect this.  I guess because I knew this I was on the lookout for the bits that were blatantly ‘added in’ post production and I found them pretty easy to spot.

Ultimately, I can see this film being loved by the kids (mainly boys!) of today.  It’s just about passable as a homage to our childhood memories and, although it’s not a classic, Transformers it is not.

6/10 Should probably keep you awake if Freddy Krueger was haunting your nights