Cowabunga!
Er, hello everyone! Happy New Year!
I hope you all said goodbye to 2014 properly and welcomed 2015 with a bang! I had a fairly slow New Year's Eve and quite enjoyed it after the last couple of years of always partying it up till dawn. So mostly it was about getting my batteries all stocked up on energy again so I can kick the year off with some more blog posts.
And to start it off, it would probably be a good idea to say that, no, I don't really meet and greet people with 'Cowabunga'. It's just the one thing I can actually, vividly remember from when I first watched the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (from now on TMNT, because my brain is trying to mess with me whenever I spell this!) back when it was still just a cartoon. I didn't watch it often, but I do remember them running around, following their rat-pack leader, and saving the day. Curiously enough I have no memory of April O'Neill ... but then I was a kid back then. And in honour of my kiddie memories, I decided to see what the 2014 movie remake was all about.
Paramount Pictures
We start off with some sort of gang violence that the reporters want to try and get to the bottom of, and April O'Neill wants more from her job than she currently has, which is jumping up and down a trampoline pretending she's a seagull. I swear I laughed so bad when I saw that! But all in all, it was a good introduction to the character, describing her zest of life and how she wants more - though I'm not entirely sure she shouldn't call the police first when coming across the bad guys stealing merchandise from one of those huge containers at the docks. Hindsight, anyone?
We do get to meet the turtles soon afterwards because they're notoriously bad at hiding their tracks and they manage to make April swoon - yup, she swoons and faints clear away. Kind of makes me think it's probably one of those damsel in distress things. The turtle brothers do their thing, not quite successful enough as she still takes a picture of them going off (after they wipe her phone). But the story has now started.
And we get to see that these turtles are actually still teenagers since their mentor, master and father-figure catches them sneaking back into the sewer that is their home - and sends them to the ha'shi. I think I spent about ten minutes Googling what that meant until I gave up and just figured it was their personal kind of punishment, which included pizza, and 99 different versions of cheese. Was it 99? I think it was ...
Deduction: April is now in trouble, and Master Rat has the guys bring her down to the lair, only she's spoken to the totally awesome William Fichtner, ahem, the obviously not obvious minion of the movie, and he was smart enough to plant one of his GPS-coded cards onto her - by giving it to her. So the baddies storm the lair, nearly kill the rat, and take every turtle but Raphael prisoner. What do the bad guys want? The mutagen in their blood, which was what April's father died for years ago trying to stop the experiments, and what will be used as a cure after poisonous and lethal toxins are unleashed on New York ... modern-day Apocalypse, right? Right.
Paramount Pictures
Only, they weren't counting on a pissed-off Raphael, tagging along with April and Vernon, her one-time camera guy, who go in to save the trio. The badass Samurai-sensei dude who is the mastermind behind this whole heist goes after them yet again, and I'm starting to think old Katsumoto would be completely ashamed of him. Anyway, the turtles are freed, and they're all off on a high-speed chase through the snowy landscape towards the city to prevent doomsday, which gives us more than enough time for comedic relief from the turtles ('They ain't dead, dumb-nuts!'). They do eventually get to the city, Vern gets his moment in the sun, the Samurai-sensei is defeated (but wait, he was slinking away even though it looked like he might have been crushed, so will he be making a reappearance?), Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello and Michelangelo learn to work together - and pimp their own sweet ride at the end of the movie. Poor Vern can never catch a break with cars, though.
This movie was an okay one for me. It had comedy, it had action, it had actors to catch your attention, and I don't see why everyone complains over Megan Fox so much. She looked fine to me, and acted fine, too. It might have been a little less obvious at times, but I did really enjoy the fact that the turtles are actually portrayed as teenagers - meaning, just as insane.
Do I think it deserves an Oscar? Not really. Will I watch any sequels? Yes, and I know people have signed up for at least three movies, so we might be looking at another franchise here. All in all, however, it's an enjoyable movie for a night-in with friends.
xx
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