Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (USA, 2014)

Nine Things About the Movie Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014)

1. This is one of those movies that doesn’t suck, but isn’t awesome, either. It’s fun, but that’s about it.

2. It’s the fifth movie about the turtles, based on the classic comic series. This is a pretty big reboot. It’s directed by Jonathan Liebesman, who directed Battle: Los Angeles and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning.

3. The movie had to go through several script changes. It was originally darker and more gritty, like the original comic series. But since Nickelodeon was helping to make it, they had to change the script to make it more family-friendly.

4. The plot is generic and tired; an evil businessman wants to poison a city by releasing a chemical into the air. The four turtles try to stop it (yeah, you’ve seen this before, only it was Spider-Man that tried to stop it).  Don’t try too hard to make sense of the story - it’s kind of just thrown together.

5.  Megan Fox April O’Neil. This time, April is a TV reporter. For some reason, Casey Jones is not in this movie. Oh, and Johnny Knoxville is the voice of Leonardo.

6. The turtles themselves are masterpieces of computer generated characters. The special effects in the movie are pretty amazing. And it’s totally worth watching in 3D.

7. It’s got a lot of humor - some of it is kinda dumb, some of it is pretty funny. And it has some great action sequences.

8.  It was produced by Michael Bay. It looks and feels like a Michael Bay film. The last 30 minutes is basically Transformers with turtles instead of robots.

9. Hardcore fans of the real, original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles will probably think this movie cuts out all the zany grit that made them so awesome. But if you don’t really know anything about the turtles, you’ll have a good time. And then you’ll go on with your life and probably forget you saw it.