Saturday, August 9, 2014

Movie Review: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles



Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has been one of my favorite stories, ideas, whatever you want to call it, for as long as I can remember. When I was little, if I was at home sick, I would watch the first 2 original movies, in order, and that would get me through the day. Even when I had my surgeries, I still made my wife sit through them. We'll call it a happy place of mine.

Needless to say, I was a bit skeptical when I heard they were redoing them in this world of remakes and no originality that we live in now. I was like most of the other avid TMNT fans, and I was furious when it came out that they were going to alter the story of them being mutants and having them as aliens. I mean, they're called Teenage MUTANT Ninja Turtles. That's just something you can't really change. My favorite line of the movie has to be the nod to that whole situation. April O'Neil's camera guy looks at her and asks, "So, they're aliens?" and she looks at him and replies, "No, that's just stupid. They're turtles."

Leading up to us going to see the movie, I checked out the reviews and saw what people were saying. I kept reading comments about how certain parts were so over the top and just not believable. All of that had me confused to be honest. One mentioned that it was just completely impossible for an 18 wheeler to slide down a mountain like it does. Ok, so let me get this straight. An 18 wheeler sliding down a mountain is unbelievable. However, 4 human sized, English speaking, ninja fighting turtles makes sense? All of the reviews basically are against this movie because it's different than the originals. Yes, this is a completely different movie, but that doesn't make it a bad movie because it's not the original.

Heck, one review even dogged this movie because Leonardo was the leader, Donatello is the techy nerd, Raphael was the angry one, and Michelangelo was the goof ball. Umm, I'm pretty sure that's exactly how they're supposed to be. I mean, that is the basic description of the characters.

If I had to nit pick, I didn't really like Whoopi Goldberg in her role, I don't like Splinter's voice (I'm just used to the old raspy voice of the original, not a normal sounding voice), and I really don't like the changing of the voices of the turtles. I don't understand why you need 2 voices for Leonardo...?

I feel like it's the "cool" thing to do to not want to like this movie, but I've never worried about what was cool or not. I really enjoyed the movie, and think they did a really good job with it. Are there little details here and that that I would change if I could? Yeah, but I could say that about every movie we see. Ok, rant about all the other reviews over.

I really liked the movie, and Dawn even made the comment about how she really liked it too. Everyone that I over heard talking as we left really enjoyed it. All of the kids loved it, all of the people around our age (20s-30s) loved it, and even the older crowd said they loved it.

I've been asked if it's kid friendly. There were tons of kinds in the theater starting anywhere from 3-4 years old and up. I can't really think of a single time during the movie that I thought "I can't believe they have kids in here seeing and hearing this." I'm guessing the PG-13 rating is because of the "violence", but they're fighting crime so fights have to be expected, right?

If you like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, I recommend you going to see the movie. Don't go see it all pissed off a the world because they're remaking another movie they shouldn't and you're just not going to like it no matter what. Go see it as a new movie based about a group of 4 butt kicking teenagers that we all have loved for so long.



No comments:

Post a Comment