Tonight, I dine on turtle soup.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

(2014)

I didn’t much care for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles first time round, and I was still (just) a teenager myself then. The popularity of Steve Barron’s movie far exceeded its quality, but at least it had cheerfully cartoonish approximations of the comic book quartet going for it, design-wise. And, of course, the magnificent Elias Koteas. This reboot comes from the perspiring mind of perpetual adolescent Michael Bay, a director-producer with a perpetual boner for both lingerie models and, it seems, ‘80s kids’ properties he can “improve” with bizarrely inappropriate doses of photo-realism.

I’m not sure anyone outside of Bay, 12-year old boys and Kelsey Grammar (guest star spots in blockbusters do pay well) can claim account for the absurd success of Transformers, four movies down the line and counting, with a guaranteed a billion dollar global gross each time. He brings the same “magic” to his over-designed and continuity drivel-driven Transformers to this Turtles reimagining. There was much controversy within Turtle fandom (Turtledom?) over early versions of the script, in which the martial arts foursome were revealed to be from outer space, or another dimension. Bay had this dropped, presumably in response to the outrage and the realisation he hadn’t a clue what he had bought, and his trio of writers reverted to something approximating the actual reptile genesis (albeit with Bay semi-regular Megan Fox’s reporter character April O’Neill now intrinsically linked the Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael and Donatello).

The plot is as rudimentary as they come; the turtles show up, kick the Foot Clan’s arses, get captured, and rally to stop the villains from spreading a deadly virus throughout New York. The villains being Shredder, and major domo scientist William Fichtner. Bay has drafted in Platinum Dunes golden boy Jonathan Liebesman to call the shots, and he dutifully delivers Bay-lite quick cut confusion masquerading as direction. Liebesman is one of the new generation of Hollywood journeymen. Whereas once they were stolid and laborious, now they are frenetic and display all the symptoms of ADD. Does anyone recall how great Liebesman’s work on Battle Los Angeles and Wrath of the Titans was? I didn’t think so.

Liebesman ensures the proceedings are messy, ugly, humourless (they should be, Johnny Knoxville lends himself to one of the turtle voices) and self-important. Nothing on his résumé suggested a talent for comedy, and he goes on to proves his lack of flair. He stages the fights as if he’s facing Transformers off against each other (low angles, slow-motion smackdowns), and is saddled with the most banal, tedious exposition-riddled dialogue to grace a Hollywood blockbuster in many a moon. Brian Tyler contributes one of his less elegant scores (actually, Iron Man Three is the exception in his back catalogue, in that its exceptional), attempting at a rousing theme but failing miserably.

And the design of these turtles is horrific. As others have commented, they look like Goombas from Super Mario Bros. with added steroid abuse. The result is a nightmarishly botched re-imagining of the beloved martial artists. As for Splinter, the rat mentor of the turtles, he resembles the Sumatran rat monkey from Peter Jackson’s Braindead, which I’m guessing was not the intention.

Fichtner can usually be relied upon, but he’s lost at sea (Whoopi Goldberg also appears, dialling up the Whoopi Goldberg). Fox is hopeless, entirely lacking in presence but cast to give the ever hormonal turtles a pretty girl to leer at. And for Will Arnett to leer at. Arnett is April’s loyal cameraman, and he’s too good a comedian not to milk a few laughs out of this. And, no doubt his kids love him for playing a semi-heroic character in a film they can actually watch. Although, the best gag is very much on the lewd side (and a dig at Bay, so that makes it almost okay; unless it was his idea, which makes it rather creepy), as the turtles conceal themselves within a bra on a Victoria’s Secret billboard. Since that’s the last shot of the movie, the laugh wasn’t worth the wait.

It’s also symptomatic of Bay’s knuckleheaded, inspiration-free approach to movies that he saves the signature line, “Cowabunga”, for the last scene; that’s what they did in the Bond “reboot” after all.

Platinum Dunes, Bay’s production company, ran into the ground a succession of horror remakes, from Texas Chainsaw Massacre to Friday the 13^th and A Nightmare on Elm Street. Presumably he now will scour the landscape for previously untapped toy lines and comics for his next goldmine. I didn’t think Turtles would do very well; the response to the design was (rightly) poisonous, and the all-CGI 2007 version fizzled. Perhaps it comes down to this; Bay’s big, empty head is equivalent to the not quite as big but equally empty head of the average teen, and as such he has a ready insight into what they like on tap.

So, if hyperactive teenagers bantering, arguing and goofing off is right up your street, you might love this. Or you still might think it’s a massive pile. It’s a noisy, depressing affair. Like The Goonies, but without any endearing qualities. Or that lousy Inspector Gadget movie, where you reach the end credits (if you’re able to) and you’re left wracking your brain trying to work out how and why anyone went to see it in the first place.

Comments

She writes Twilight fan fiction.

Vampire Academy (2014)
My willingness to give writer Daniel Waters some slack on the grounds of early glories sometimes pays off (Sex and Death 101) and sometimes, as with this messy and indistinct Young Adult adaptation, it doesn’t. If Vampire Academy plods along as a less than innovative smart-mouthed Buffy rip-off that might be because, if you added vampires to Heathers, you would probably get something not so far from the world of Joss Whedon. Unfortunately inspiration is a low ebb throughout, not helped any by tepid direction from Daniel’s sometimes-reliable brother Mark and a couple of hopelessly plankish leads who do their best to dampen down any wit that occasionally attempts to surface.

I can only presume there’s a never-ending pile of Young Adult fiction poised for big screen failure, all of it comprising multi-novel storylines just begging for a moment in the Sun. Every time an adaptation crashes and burns (and the odds are that they will) another one rises, hydra-like, hoping…

Imagine a plant that could think... Think!

The Avengers 4.12: Man-Eater of Surrey Green
Most remarked upon for Robert Banks-Stewart having “ripped it off” for 1976 Doctor Who story The Seeds of Doom, although, I’ve never been wholly convinced. Yes, there are significant similarities – an eccentric lady making who knows her botany, a wealthy businessman living in a stately home with an affinity for vegetation, an alien plant that takes possession of humans, a very violent henchman and a climax involving a now oversized specimen turning very nasty… Okay, maybe they’re onto something there… – but The Seeds of Doom is really good, while Man-Eater of Surrey Green is just… okay.

This isn't fun, it's scary and disgusting.

It (2017)
(SPOILERS) Imagine how pleased I was to learn that an E Nesbitt adaptation had rocketed to the top of the US charts, evidently using a truncated version of its original title, much like John Carter of Mars. Imagine my disappointment on rushing to the cinema and seeing not a Psammead in sight. Can anyone explain why It is doing such phenomenal business? It isn’t the Stephen King brand, which regular does middling-at-best box office. Is it the nostalgia factor (‘50s repurposed as the ‘80s, so tapping into the Stranger Things thing, complete with purloined cast member)? Or maybe that it is, for the most part, a “classier” horror movie, one that puts its characters first (at least for the first act or so), and so invites audiences who might otherwise shun such fare? Perhaps there is no clear and outright reason, and it’s rather a confluence of circumstances. Certainly, as a (mostly) non-horror buff, I was impressed by how well It tackled pretty much everything that wasn’t the hor…

You better watch what you say about my car. She's real sensitive.

Christine (1983)
(SPOILER) John Carpenter was quite open about having no particular passion to make Christine. The Thing had gone belly-up at the box office, and adapting a Stephen King seemed like a sure-fire way to make bank. Unfortunately, its reception was tepid. It may have seemed like a no-brainer – Duel’s demonic truck had put Spielberg on the map a decade earlier – but Carpenter discovered “It was difficult to make it frightening”. More like Herbie, then. Indeed, the director is at his best in the build-up to unleashing the titular automobile, making the fudging of the third act all the more disappointing.

Don't worry about Steed, ducky. I'll see he doesn't suffer.

The Avengers 4.11: Two’s A Crowd
Oh, look. Another Steed doppelganger episode. Or is it? One might be similarly less than complimentary about Warren Mitchell dusting off his bungling Russian agent/ambassador routine (it obviously went down a storm with the producers; he previously played Keller in The Charmers and Brodny would return in The See-Through Man). Two’s A Crowd coasts on the charm of its leads and supporting performances (including Julian Glover), but it’s middling fare at best.

It could have been an accident. He decided to sip a surreptitious sup and slipped. Splash!

4.10 A Surfeit of H20
A great episode title (definitely one of the series’ top ten) with a storyline boasting all the necessary ingredients (strange deaths in a small village, eccentric supporting characters, Emma even utters the immortal “You diabolical mastermind, you!”), yet A Surfeit of H20 is unable to quite pull itself above the run of the mill.

Why are you painting my house?

mother!
(SPOILERS) Darren Aronofsky has a reasonably-sized chin, but on this evidence, he’ll have reduced it to a forlorn stump with all that stroking in no time at all. And then set the remains alight. And then summoned it back into existence for a whole new round of stroking. mother! is a self-indulgent exercise in unabated tedium in the name of a BIG idea, one no amount of assertive psued-ing post-the-fact can turn into a masterpiece. Yes, that much-noted “F” cinemascore was well warranted.

Have no fear! Doc Savage is here!

Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze (1975)
(SPOILERS) Forget about The Empire Strikes Back, the cliffhanger ending of Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze had me on the edge of my seat for a sequel that never came. How could they do that to us (well, me)? This was of course, in the period prior to discernment and wisdom, when I had no idea Doc Savage was a terrible movie. I mean, it is, isn’t it? Well, it isn’t a great movie, but it has a certain indolent charm, in the manner of a fair few mid-‘70s SF and fantasy fare (Logan’s Run, The Land that Time Forgot) that had no conception the genre landscape was on the cusp of irrevocable change.

Let the monsters kill each other.

Game of Thrones Season Seven
(SPOILERS) Column inches devoted to Game of Thrones, even in “respectable” publications, seems to increase exponentially with each new season, so may well reach critical mass with the final run. Groundswells of opinion duly become more evident, and as happens with many a show by somewhere around this point, if not a couple of years prior, Season Seven has seen many of the faithful turn on once hallowed storytelling, and at least in part, there’s good reason for that.

Some suggest the show has jumped the shark (or crashed the Wall); there were concerns over how much the pace increased last year, divested as it was of George RR Martin’s novels as a direct source, but this year’s succession of events make Six seem positively sluggish. I don’t think GoT has suddenly, resoundingly, lost it, and I’d argue there did need to be an increase in momentum (people are quick to forget how much moaning went on about seemingly nothing happening for long stretches of previ…

James Bond, who only has to make love to a woman and she starts to hear heavenly choirs singing.

Thunderball (1965)
Look up! Look down! Look out! Her comes the biggest Bond of all! So advised the poster for the fourth 007 cinematic feast. Biggest it most definitely was, but unfortunately in almost every other respect the finished film is inferior to its three predecessors. Nevertheless, the approach taken by the producers (a favourite of Hollywood generally) was to throw enough money at the screen in the hope it would result in higher box office receipts. Which proved a successful one on this occasion. It remains the highest grossing Bond film (inflation-adjusted), in the US.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

Search This Blog