Showing posts with label Tony Shalhoub. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tony Shalhoub. Show all posts

Thursday, August 7, 2014

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - Movie Screening



Photo from gofobo.com

Director Jonathan Liebesman's "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" is not as terrible as one might have expected. But in the sense of bringing back memories to this 90s child, this movie is the best so far this year. 

The film does suffer because of the comic book-based elements that inevitably must be grounded in the 'real world' with, at times too much backstory. From main character and our eyes into the lives of the Turtles, April O'Neil (Megan Fox.)

O’Neil, a struggling news reporter seeking to make her bones on a story about the FOOT Clan. In doing so, she encounters the Turtles and befriends them, realizing that she -- and her scientist father -- had a hand in their origin. 

Through a series of confusingly-written scenes that burden us with too much backstory, we learn that the Ninja Turtles were her pets as a young child, and that her father was shot and killed by the villainous Eric Sachs (William Fichtner). The movie is obsessed with explaining how things work in a world dominated by sentient, talking turtles trained in the art of karate. 

From here, the movie auto-pilots its way through weightless, logic-less CG set pieces as Sachs and his Master, Shredder, scheme to unleash a deadly pathogen into New York City, one which Sachs will make money on by providing the government with a cure -- which he'll derive somehow from the Turtles' blood. Given the obsession of explaining the science, I was relieved with the lack of information provided here.

When the Turtles plays the nostalgia card it happens without being forced, which is refreshing. Fans will be pleased to finally see their beloved characters cut loose in action scenes, in ways that enjoyably harken back to the animated series. 

Megan Fox arguably gives her best performance in a summer tentpole to date, but she's still unable to quite nail the deadpan humor the character is often required to deliver. Her dream to be taken seriously as a journalist, which she announces repeatedly, is dropped in favor of an unconvincing and un-earned goal of accepting the turtles as her brothers.