Liebesman's 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles'

 

So I finally watched Jonathan Liebesman’s ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ last night, courtesy of my 8-year-old nephew Ethan, who (to cut a long story short) acquired the DVD. The following are my first impressions, which are likely to alter with subsequent viewings.

Ethan was educating me, telling me the names of the four Turtles, by colour, and I listened humbly to his Master Splinter-like wise counsel. It was cute. I was watching the ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ animated TV series; eating TMNT ice cream; buying a TMNT colouring book and keeping it in pristine condition; and drawing the Turtles for my classmates in primary school, about 15 years before he was born. So, it was cute.

Designer Massimo Vignelli said “If you do it right, it will last forever.” The ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ are a perfect example of this. In the early ‘90s, when I was a preteen, the TMNT were all the rage. Now two and a half decades later, I’m 33-years-old, and TMNT are still a hot commodity. Creators Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman outdid themselves. They created a pop culture phenomenon that has stood the test of time, that has lasted ‘forever’. Okay 25 years isn’t ‘forever’, but you get the point.

 

It’s difficult to make a child-friendly science fiction-action-adventure-comedy movie, in which there are four giant reptiles who wield Ninja weapons and a ‘robot samurai’ who shoots knives from his arms. Liebesman had the task of restraining the gore and not showing a single trace of blood (except in the ‘blood draining’ scene) in this film where bullets, katana, bo-staff, sai and nunchaku, fly in almost every frame, without looking ridiculous. He pulled it off. Although, I think the child-friendly rating (PG-13), kept this film from really soaring, from achieving its full potential. Had TMNT had an ‘R’ Rating, it would have been a much better film, I think.

 

When bad guy scientist Eric Sacks (William Fichtner) had Leonardo (Johnny Knoxville), Donatello (Jeremy Howard) and Michaelangelo (Noel Fisher), in his clutches and was marveling at these mutated humanoid reptiles, that he and other scientists, unwittingly created, he said something like “And to think, we could have used rabbits!” This struck me as a nod to cartoonist Stan Sakai’s rabbit bodyguard, Usagi Yojimbo. I enjoyed this.

When Splinter (Tony Shalhoub) tells the Turtles how they ended up in the sewers, that it was the young April O’Neil (Megan Fox) who saved them from a laboratory fire and brought them here, he calls April a ‘hogosha’ – a guardian spirit. Then one of the Turtles says, quite funnily and somewhat reverentially, “Dude, like, our friend is a guardian spirit” or something like that. I found this amusing.

 

The action sequences, though impressively elaborate and ambitious (e.g. the chase down a snow-covered slop), left me a little underwhelmed. Why? Perhaps it’s because I felt a sense of deja vu, as though I had seen it all before. In one shot, I felt that a CG character didn’t interact convincingly with a human actor. This is when April meets Splinter for the first time. We see this brief shot of them facing one another, but Megan Fox, to me, doesn’t look like she can actually see the computer-generated Splinter. Did the problem lie with the acting, or the VFX, or both?

 

There are four giant turtles and one giant rodent, who have a familial bond; unwittingly form an alliance with a female reporter; have mastered Asian-style armed and unarmed combat; live beneath a gigantic city that is threatened by a diabolical scientist and an evil, shadowy master of the war arts. I am looking for the subtext and symbolism, in this premise. I can’t find any.

‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’, this name manages to combine four disparate elements – a phase in the growth or aging of a human being, a genetic phenomenon, an ancient martial art used by mercenaries in feudal Japan, and a reptile that resembles a tortoise – and makes it look natural. This is quite a feat, if you ask me.

‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ is a great deal of fun to watch. I look forward to watching it again.