Anyone out there riding high on a nostalgia kick and hoping to reconnect with the joys of their youth, with any remaining desire to see "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," would be wise to remember the fable of The Scorpion And The Frog. A scorpion needing a ride across a stream meets a frog. He asks the frog for a ride, but the frog wisely retorts that he'll be stung. The scorpion assures the frog he can be trusted and wins his ride. Fate being fate, he stings the frog anyway, and with his dying breath, the frog simply asks why.
"What'd you expect, something original?," the scorpion replies. "This is the summer movie season, and there's franchises to be milked. Five dollar surcharge for those 3D glasses, by the way."
Dour, tone-deaf, and astonishingly dimwitted, this latest attempt at a Turtles reboot cynically preys on our rose-tinted fondness for that which we thought we used to love. That it's dumb should come as no surprise. We are talking about sewer dwelling mutants named for Renaissance artists who fight crime and chow on pizza. But did it have to be so, I dunno...dumb about being dumb?
At the core of the movie's troubles is an almost dizzying unsureness about itself. On the one hand, director Jonathan Liebesman and producer Michael Bay can worship at the altar of Christopher Nolan and his Batman franchise, trudging along with heavy duty mythology building. On the other hand, jokes about the turtles moonlighting as a rap group! They can reflect a rather grim worldview, confusing "grey" and "serious," with action sequences shot using the requisite gritty, handheld zooms. On the other hand, eating pizza leads to flatulence! By the time a villain says, "Activate the toxin release procedure," it's actually tough to know if they're joking.
Lets lay our cards on the table. Does anyone truly care about the Turtles? I don't mean people like me who watched it as kids, and I don't mean casual fans who might keep the animated series on in the background. I mean truly care, with the fervor of Batman followers who created vicious petitions when Ben Affleck stepped in to fill the cape of their beloved crusader. "Turtles" fatally miscalculates why we respond to different comic book lore, and while Liebesman seems to recognize the inherent silliness in this origin story, he's also unfortunately timid in offending any potential True Believers out there. This creates a tiresome level of self-aware "wink wink, nudge nudge, ain't this dumb" jokes while at the same time never fully committing to that notion.
You dance with the one that brung ya, and if "Turtles" is going to be terrible, the least it could do is stick with a reason for being terrible. Instead we have this stumbling hogwash that clumsily mixes stone faced respect with levity, resulting in a screenplay from three credited writers that doesn't know where it's going and takes forever to get there. Pay for a movie about four turtles who are teenage and mutant and ninjas (you'd be forgiven for doing so)? Too bad, chump! Strap in for a movie largely centered on plucky young reporter April O'Neil (Megan Fox, who never met a human emotion she couldn't aspire to).
That's right. Although "Turtles" comes advertised as being primarily about the, you know, turtles, they're relegated to virtual sidemen in their own movie, with the focus smack on April's ascendance in the journalism world from frivolous eye candy to respected reporter. And, given that we've got a franchise to build, dagnabbit, everything about the turtles and their creation and the villainous plot to release some toxin upon New York can somehow all be connected to her.
It's convenient, hammy storytelling, and if it's punctuated with admittedly effective motion capture technology for the turtles, to what end? No one shows up with a clear idea of what movie they wanted to make or why. None of these movies will ever be masterpieces. Watching the original 1990 "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" movie recently on cable, though, it still offered a firm grasp on its story, its world, and the four individual personalities of its leads. It knew what movie it wanted to be and who it wanted to be for.
This "Turtles" feels tailor made for hate watching, but not for people who hate the movie. This is hate watching for people who hate themselves.
NOTE: This review's headline is directly lifted from a joke made about the 2007 franchise reboot "TMNT" by my college dorm mate John Musci. Wherever you are in the world, my friend, if you're googling yourself, God bless.
No comments:
Post a Comment