Cowabunga: A un-intellectual glance at the Renaissance.

Childhood is often a confusing, yet wondrous, experience. Early on, you notice how big every body is and how small you seem to be by comparison. This makes you jealous and forces your hand when disappointing meal insults are cast on your plate... you have to grow big and strong somehow, thus ensuring meals of your own choosing from then on! It's a twisted sort of blackmail that occasionally found reward whenever the dessert that followed was awarded to you for your diligent(or begrudged) consumption of said insults. I am not going to say that a certain Michael Bay-produced movie actually follows this shoddy sort of metaphor(if that's what it seems like I am building here) but, rather, I am glad to say that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles do remain firmly rooted in my childhood. The aforementioned movie merely, and somewhat faithfully despite its many other faults, echoed the Ninja Turtles of my youth in a generally confusing, yet wondrous, way.(if this paragraph is also confusing and wondrous I will parenthetically blame Michael Bay right now)

The movie starts on a semi-high note of intensity and I have to say that this is basically the most annoying thing about the movie. I don't mean it is all actiony right from the get go... more that it doesn't give itself any time to breath or flesh out any real character development. It follows April O'Neil, meagerly played by Megan Fox, in a way that gives her a bit too much prominence, in my opinion. I don't normally have a problem with Megan Fox as an actor but I think she was pretty ho-hum for most of the movie. Will Arnett's character, a basically uninspired tagalong, was equally ho-hum and it tends to make me think that the director is more to blame for their general blandness than anything. All the ho-hummety basically creates a problem for the first half of the movie since April, as the main focus of the movie, is not really able to carry it very well from a lead sort of position.

However... once things started to pick up, somewhere in the middle of the movie, it all changed for the better. Mostly, the turtles themselves actually saved the movie. They really are heroic! Ha. They brought in all the action goodness that I hoped to see and basically squashed out all of the lackluster nonsense permeating first half of the movie. And, even though the turtles themselves, along with Splinter and the Shredder, were quite visually different than the 1990 film of the same name, they definitely commanded the leading role of the movie quite well throughout the rest of the movie.

Each turtle was visually distinct, uniquely characteristic, and reflected well the turtles of old in their individual personality as well as their group dynamics. I scoffed at the visual changes to their faces when I first saw a preview of the movie, thinking they tried to make them too "human" looking, which basically made them creepy/goofy-looking instead of radical. I got used to it fairly quickly, though, and even though their facial look is not as good as the original movie, their overall look was pretty gnarly.

The plot was nothing too mysterious. The cinematography was pretty good. The music was fine.

Overall, I will rate this movie 6 bo staffs out of 9. Good enough for repeat viewings, though, not at full ticket price... you know... on Netflix or the like. Good times.