TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES is a shamefully bad Hollywood comic book blockbuster produced by Michael Bay, who really should know better. I'm a fan of the 1980s TV series but this is nothing like that show and instead an example of the usual soulless, mindless, unoriginal trash currently filling cinemas. Gone has the look, warmth, and humour of the turtles themselves, to be replaced by motion captured CGI hulks who make incessant and deeply unfunny one-liner jokes whenever they're on screen. Watching their supposed 'camaraderie' is an embarrassment and don't get me started on the voice acting. Megan Fox shows up to remind you why she's never had a 'proper' Hollywood career while others like William Fichtner should really know better. As with all films like this, things start off slow but by the end it's turned into one giant, aimless, generic-feeling CGI action set-piece spectacular that just goes on and on and on.

An evil criminal group called the Foot Clan led by Shredder is stealing a load of chemicals from the docks. Intrepid cub reporter April O'Neil (Megan Fox) is trying to do some real news for once. She stumbles onto the crime which gets foiled by a mysterious vigilante. She has no proof and nobody at her local TV station believes her. Shredder tries to flush out the vigilante by taking hostages. April is once again on the scene. This time, she discovers the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. She figures out that Eric Sacks (William Fichtner) and her father had injected a mutagen into her childhood pet turtles. Splinter the rat also from the lab is their master. TV station manager fires her for her crazy ranting. Her cameraman Vern Fenwick (Will Arnett) tries to help.

Megan Fox is a pretty stiff actress. She has improved slightly over the years but I wouldn't proclaim her to be actually good. I find her face to be too immobile. Will Arnett has a couple of jokes. The comedy is a small step above the bad jokes in Transformers. The turtles are fine although they need some scenes to introduce their relationships and individuality. They should have a couple of scenes where they stop, eat pizza and joke around. Those are great to inject humor and build chemistry. I really like the elevator. The movie needs to sit them down and let them have some fun. In the end, this movie is overloaded with action which gets to be a bit mind numbing.

Hands down, even many decades after their creation, everybody still knows and somewhat appreciates the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles". That's why many, especially the fans I guess, must have been curious when they heard that the franchise is going to be rebooted in live action with a 2014 release. And this first film must have been successful enough as a sequel was greenlighted not much later. But in terms of quality, it is really far from enough unfortunately. The fact that I did not like the looks of the Turtles that much is purely subjective I guess, but the story just felt so generic, predictable and there is absolutely nothing individual to it I must say. And is this really a Turtles film? I must say I felt that it was really more "April O'Neil: The Movie". The reason for that may have been that they got Megan Fox to play the character and she is still quite a huge star, so probably demanded lots of screen time and a plot that revolves around her in order to say yes to this franchise. But apart from the fact that Fox is not a very talented actress, the story about her character also isn't effective at all. The plot about her dead father and with Fichtner's character responsible for the death feels so predictable and desperate to evoke emotions that it's almost cringeworthy. I think Fichtner is a fairly solid villain actor, even if he occasionally feels like a poor man's Christopher Walken, but he is still one of the better things about the film, even if he has very little to work with here. It is all about putting Fox in the spotlight, never about a good story.

Now about the Turtles: I think that neither they, nor Splinter and especially not Shredder fulfilled the great potential they had in terms of filmmaking perspective. Of course, it is quite a difficult challenge to construct a film about a life-sized rat and four life-sized turtles (especially with the joking around) as you have to give it the comedic approach at times. But here it did not ring true for the most part. The balance between comedy and moments in which the film takes itself so seriously went pretty wrong most of the time. It is very shocking to see so many writers busy with the script here and the result is such a very weak outcome. About Will Arnett ("Arrested Development"),who is basically included for the human comic relief, the film intensified my opinion about him as an actor. His comedy can work in the right context and setting and some of his jokes work too, but most of the time you can feel the writers' desperate attempt at going for some cheap laughter. But what distracted me the most about him is the make-up and how they tried so hard to make him look 10 years younger than he actually is, so that we can accept him as a love interest for Fox' character. It's just another from a long list of oddities (in a negative sense) when it comes to this film. I saw the sequel received slightly better rating and reviews, but after seeing this one, I must say I have very little interest to check out movie number two. The Turtles are a great challenge from a cinematic perspective, no doubt about it, and the people who made this movie here weren't up to it. I give these 100 minutes a thumbs-down. The title characters deserve much better. Not recommended.