As you can imagine, the 3D is not your friend in this case either, and it should be avoided if you ever feel sensitive to its negative physical effects. This is extra problematic given that the four eponymous leads all look near identical at super speed, leading the audience to hope that they can catch a glimpse of the individually colored masks as to just try and keep up with what’s happening. Despite the fact that he is working with uniquely-built characters who can move and fight in all kinds of interesting ways, Liebesman insists on keeping his camera no more than two feet away from the actors at all times during fight scenes – the result being nothing but blurs of CGI whipping past the lens. That is, however, the exact opposite direction taken by Liebesman and screenwriters Josh Appelbaum, André Nemec and Evan Daugherty, who haphazardly threw together some of the worst, oft-repeated blockbuster plot elements out there with a chaotic visual style to create a movie that has absolutely nothing going for it.Įven if you plan to see Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (don’t) exclusively for the action sequences, your satisfaction is in no way guaranteed. It’s light, weird material targeted at children, but it’s also what could be a healthy base for adventurous conflict found through creative storytelling and interesting character development. It behooves me at this point to acknowledge an understanding that what we have here is a movie about a team of talking turtles who fight crime, eat pizza, and live in the sewer with their rat father-figure/sensei.
This is the kind of atmosphere that leads to films like director Jonathan Liebesman’s new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reboot, a movie that is so catastrophically awful in both story and presentation that it practically exists as an insult to anyone who would be considered as a fan of its cherished franchise.