I’ve been a TMNT fan for awhile. I was at the perfect age when the 90’s cartoon hit, it was aimed right at me. The first movie was (and for the most part still is) awesome. Then I grew out of it and mostly forgot it existed (the further movies and cartoons were not good). Then Nickelodeon brings out a new computer generated animated show in 2012 and it’s hit all the checkmarks. Probably the best looking CG animated show ever made and they change just enough to make it new while still respecting the origins. Now, Hollywood gets a wack at it. How’d it turn out? Well…

First, this is a kids movie, so it’s not exactly aiming for the Oscars to begin with. There’s a lot of dumb stuff here and it’s a very simple movie. On to the things they got right. The spirit of the show is there. They got the Turtles attitudes right and despite the big redesign with the Shrek faces (which I got used to), they look incredible. I even like how Splinter looks. The special effects as a whole are really great. It’s a fun and funny (Mikey!) movie.

There’s a lot of bewildering script decisions going on here though. The one that bothered me the most is their poor excuse of a origin change. They wanted to tie April O’Neal’s past into theirs, but the logic and reasoning of what happened doesn’t work nearly as well as the original/ All of Splinters history is taken away which means his ties with his nemesis, Shredder, are gone. They come up with a half baked idea for Splinter to know who Shredder is, but..what the hell!? It’s stupid and makes no sense. Splinter becomes a martial arts master by reading books he finds in the sewer? What? Am I saying that I can believe that a Japanese martial artist (and all around good guy) can be mutated into a giant rat and can teach mutated giant turtles his skills, but I can’t believe that a lab rat can be mutated into a giant rat, learn martial arts and teach mutated turtles those same skills  in 15 years? Yes, I am.

There is so much bad logic in this movie it’s hard to know what I should talk about. The bad guys threat to the city is incredibly stupid. They want to make a “cure everything” mutagen, but they have to poison the whole city to sell it? What? There’s plenty of illnesses available right now for your product to work on now! Name your price! Why do you need to take all the Turtle’s blood to make it? You can’t synthesize as much as you want from just a bit of it from the miracle machine you whipped up in matter of days after thinking all traces of the mutagen were gone for 15 years? What the hell happened to Shredder’s suit? He really needed to look like a Transformer (real talk: It was cool how he could magnetically retrieve his blades)?  How could anyone move in that thing without toppling over every 6 steps? Why did he stop beating Raphael’s ass when he had him alone? How the hell did they live through that fall in the antenna? How did they get any mutagen to bring back to Splinter? How freaking big was that mountain they were sliding down in that action scene? Is it right next to the airplane runway in Fast and Furious 6? Finally, the movie is produced by Michael Bay, not directed by him. If he isn’t behind the camera, his moves should not be mimicked all over the damn place. The amount of times the camera spins around characters is absurd. It’s so needless and off putting.

So yeah, it’s a decent kids movie. I really think the potential is there for a way better sequel (which is coming, it made a fortune). Some common sense will go a long way. Be sure to watch the Nickelodeon show though, it’s brilliant stuff.