Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

After a couple of failed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies I am sure fans that grew up on either animated series were a little skeptical going into this movie (I know I was). That said I was so pleasantly surprised with how amazing this film was. It was not only fun and funny but it was emotional and brilliant.

Let’s start with the fact that the cast of voice actors was perfect. For the first time in the history of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the turtles sounded like teenagers and not grown ass men. That small and very simple change inherently made the movie better. Because the writing then lent itself to that. The boys were acting and talking like boys. Throwing ninja stars at a watermelon that one of the brothers is holding said watermelon is a very 15 year old boy thing to do. Their natural existence was the comic relief in what turned out to be a very emotional story.

Now I am not gonna lie, the plot was that of every X-Man comic ever. In fact with the giant evil machine it was literally the plot of the 2nd X-Men movie. That said it was executed far better then the X-Men movie. These sweet, adorable 15 year old babies just want to be accepted. Now something that I really loved is that they didn’t want to be human, they just wanted to live normal lives as themselves. But Splinter is afraid of humans and essentially used that to keep his boys sheltered.

Jackie Chan as Splinter was incredible, truly perfect casting. I also loved that they made him old man Splinter, where he would kick some ass but be really tired and sore afterwards. Splinter got his own arc, he started off as this really (justifiably) terrified father who just wants to keep his babies safe. He tells his boys something along the lines of, “If you want to be happy you have to listen to me”. When he hears the villain of the movie say the same thing, he realizes that he was wrong and APOLOGIZES to his boys. He then accepts help from humans during the big fight. It was such an amazingly well written thing to watch, I literally started crying in the middle of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie.

Now of course we can’t get through this review without talking about April, Leo’s human crush. She is extremely badass and she, even as a human, struggles with being liked and accepted as well. Which is probably why April connected so quickly with the boys. Her arc was probably my favorite. When she goes on live TV to defend the boys and let the public know that they were the good guys, my heart got so big.

My favorite part of the film as someone who has been a fan of TMNT since I was a kid is that the characterizations were great. Every turtle had their own personality and it was very clear who was who. Leo is my favorite as a grown adult who used to love Raphael.

Overall the movie was incredible, 10/10. As Patrick and I come off the high of such an incredible movie experience I won’t call it a perfect movie yet, but I came real close today. Not being able to find a flaw in the movie is not all it takes to label it a perfect film. There is only one single film that has ever earned that label from me and it's because I can watch nothing else for days on end without getting remotely tired of it. So only time will tell if Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles earns the title of perfect movie, but it is a must watch.