Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014)

seelsa73 said:

Why is it so hard for some people to wrap their heads around the idea that an actual TMNT fan might genuinely like this movie and isn't just jumping on a bandwagon or making bs excuses?

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I reluctantly went to see the new Turtle movie and I was entertained. So much negative hype, which I now feel was just people wanting to trash Michael Bay rather than accurately review the movie. I still think the first live action turtle movie was the best. The looked like the COMIC!!! Yeah! They pulled it off!

I don't like the endless reboots either, but when you have a theater that sevres burgers and beer with comfy seats to snuggle with yer honey, if I am pleasantly entertained I am happy. In contrast, no matter how wunnerful the theater, Transformers 4 was a movie to endure rather than enjoy.

Just saw it...meh. A lot of over the top stuff that went too far (the entire mountain/sewer waterslide thing) and pretty heavy-handed with the exposition. Raph was too douchebro and Mikey was creepy but at times it worked ok. I actually kinda liked Don. Leo was a non-entity, as was, oddly, Shredder. April was blandly unobjectionable. Overall...it wasn't the thorough trainwreck I assumed it would be (mind you, I'm trying to judge this as though I was seeing it at 10, not 39, since I'm taking this as a kids' movie) but it was just sorta generic and forgettable. Felt like large chunks of it were paint-by-numbers/recycled. Not that the original TMNT movie is some work of high art, but it's still the least awful and therefore reigning king. I will damn the movie with faint praise and say I don't feel like it was a COMPLETE waste of time watching it on a Tuesday night with a few beers. D+

cayman shen said:

Just saw it...meh. A lot of over the top stuff that went too far (the entire mountain/sewer waterslide thing) and pretty heavy-handed with the exposition. Raph was too douchebro and Mikey was creepy but at times it worked ok. I actually kinda liked Don. Leo was a non-entity, as was, oddly, Shredder. April was blandly unobjectionable. Overall...it wasn't the thorough trainwreck I assumed it would be (mind you, I'm trying to judge this as though I was seeing it at 10, not 39, since I'm taking this as a kids' movie) but it was just sorta generic and forgettable. Felt like large chunks of it were paint-by-numbers/recycled. Not that the original TMNT movie is some work of high art, but it's still the least awful and therefore reigning king. I will damn the movie with faint praise and say I don't feel like it was a COMPLETE waste of time watching it on a Tuesday night with a few beers. D+

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Pretty much agree with everything you said...except the bolded part(you take that back! ). I watched it few weeks ago in pretty much the same conditions. Lots of jumping around plotwise and in the movie around and a whole lotta "meh". I didn't really care for April's previous relationship with the turtles and the "WTF?" method of Splinter learning/teaching ninjitsu. But it was pretty cool seeing Splinter in action for once! Shredder's returning blades was stupid. I understood the armor though, with how they built up the turtles and showed how much damage they could deal(sort of) and absorb(almost literal), I don't think the traditional Shredder from the comics, cartoon or previous movies would have held up so well in a fight.

I gotta say that as someone who lived right off the Tappan Zee bridge in NY, about 15 miles from the city, I kept wondering what the hell was happening with the geography. It's like someone thought Lake Placid was three miles from Brooklyn or something. They're way the hell in the mountains, then a short sewer slide later they're back in the city? You know what's just a few miles from New York City? MORE CITY. So unless that sewer was like 120 miles long, those mountains don't connect with one drainpipe to NYC. Sheesh. I'll accept mutant turtles, but you can't just invent geography.

I agreed that it was cool to see Splinter in action, and I felt he was less of a flagrant Yoda rip-off in this version ( his voice went a long way in that regard) but the way he used his tail kinda grossed me out. He was kinda gross in general, actually. Almost worse than the turtles, and that's saying something...