Belser Movie Reviews: “TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES”(Spoiler-Free)

BELSER MOVIE REVIEWS: “TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES”(Spoiler-Free).  


What's up, peoples? It's your boi " The Belser",  back once again to give you guys and gals here at Comicbookmovie.com a piece of my 'mental mind"...lol. First off, I want to say how skeptical I was of this movie. When I would look on the movie news and see words “Michael Bay” and “Aliens”, I was quite worried. My love for the Turtles is DEEP. In fact, I was watching the 80’s cartoon right before I watched the movie. Just finished a midnight show of this flick and ...Man….I was pleasantly surprised. It was much better than I expected and I admit I was wrong in my initial assessment.  It goes back to a sort-of mantra I’ve adopted for movie-watching: “Reserve judgment until you see the finished product".


HERE’S THE STORY:  

The movie begins with coverage of a crime wave in New York, initiated by the Foot Clan who are led by the mysterious leader known as “Shredder”. In the meantime, junior reporter April O’ Neil (Megan Fox) is looking for the ‘Big Story’ to push her into the big time. , One night, she accidently sees a group of powerful vigilantes taking on the Foot Clan in the darkness of night.  After researching other incidents involving the vigilantes and trying to prove she’s not a loon, she tries to get proof of their existence. She , of course, ends up face to face with this group who are not only vigilantes but they're also 6 foot tall, big muscled talking humanoid turtles that happen to be ninjas and teenagers. April and the Turtles team up to stop the Shredder’s evil plan that will affect all of New York.


ACTING: 

I thought that Megan Fox as April O’Neil was a bad idea. And you know what? I WAS RIGHT! She is terrible! They wrote April so bad in this movie. She’s basically a Lois Lane-like damsel in distress with poor decision making skills. Plus, half of her performance is listening to her hard-ass breathing.  However, Will Arnett provides some comic relief as Vern, who was April’s rival in the cartoons and is more of a lazy perv in this movie. The Turtles themselves were done great. Of the bunch, Raphael and Michelangelo get the most shine. Michelangelo is the FUNNIEST character in the movie just like he was on the cartoon and has a big crush on April.  


DIALOGUE: 

The story was pretty decent and easy to follow. One thing I noticed was the lack of explosions, bad humor and gratuitous ass shots from hot (but BAD) actresses. This is unusual for a Michael Bay production. Then, I saw that Michael Bay just produced it. This movie was actually directed by Jonathan Liebesman (THE RING).


SPECIAL EFFECTS:

The Turtles were all CGI and motion capture. One thing I noticed was that, while all the Turtles were huge, they had different body types. They also had certain traits to separate them (Donatello has glasses; Raphael has a facial scar, etc.). Splinter had a bit of a Fu Manchu look to him which I dug. The Shredder‘s armor was mostly CGI and more cybernetic than I had ever seen before. Almost “Transformer”-like…. (WINK WINK).


THE FINAL WORD:

Would I watch this again? That would be a HELL YES! Just from a nostalgia stand point, I was great watching a live action Ninja Turtles again. This movie reminded me a lot of the first TRANSFORMERS movie (you know, before all the bullshit). It’s a very fun movie. Go check it out. Worth the money. This movie definitely GETS the Belser Seal of Approval.

Dont' forget to check out the Belser Movie Reviews group page on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/groups/belsermoviereviews.