TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES Is One Slice Short of a Pizza

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES Review:

- First, to preface: there are some things I loved as a kid, and then ... there's the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Yes, as I may or may not have written in the context of previous posts, I grew up a total Turtlemaniac. On Saturday mornings I would dutifully watch each new episode of the TMNT cartoon. I collected the action figures, played the videogames, and drew hundreds of carefully-conceived comic book-style drawings of my favorite heroes in a half-shell and their various enemies and allies. And so, while a part of me wanted to simply dismiss this latest Turtles movie, throwing a grizzled middle finger at the Michael Bay-produced reboot, this was one where the pull of youthful nostalgia was simply too strong. There's something else, too. As a kid, I vividly remember all the public outcry about how the Turtles were corrupting a nation's youth. I remember parents worried that the show was inspiring their kids to be violent, rude, and weird. I remember an older generation that simply didn't get how their kids and grandkids could be so enamored with these Teenaged Ninja Mutant Turtles ... or whatever they were called. And now, twenty-five years later, you've got to admit ... there's something awesome about the Turtles still being alive and kicking and #1 at the box office. It feels like a hearty screw-you from my generation to the old farts who made us feel a sense of guilt for loving what we loved. Not only did we keep the Turtles around, but by-god, a whole new generation of kids has grown up yelling "Cowabunga!" and becoming obsessed with nunchuk-weieding mutant teens. So take that, Mom and Dad.

And by the way ... I see a lot of movie reviews out there from the ever-bitter Gen-X crowd that lament a generation that takes the Turtles seriously, and condescendingly wonders how it is that 20 and 30-somethings still carry nostalgic affection for this particular franchise. This coming from the same people who have collectively creamed themselves over Rocket Raccoon and Groot. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I just think there's a tendency for people to look down on anything that they missed out on because they were too old. The same way I instinctively get annoyed when I see people younger than me posting nostalgically about some crap from the 00's that I was old enough not to care about at the time. I'm not saying that we don't look back on old cartoons and other childhood ephemera with rose-colored glasses ... because we do. And I'm not saying that that is always a healthy thing that should be encouraged. However, let's also acknowledge that there was indeed a certain imagination, originality, scope, and flat-out awesome factor to the Turtles that caused them to make such an impact, and that's kept them in the pop-cultural conversation long after predicted expiration dates.

Okay, all that aside ... the new TMNT movie is not exactly all that. It feels like a Frankenstein-monster of a film. Rarely have I seen a blockbuster movie where its various layers of creation felt so exposed. Meaning, this is very clearly a movie that went through many drastic re-writes and creative overhauls prior to the final product hitting theaters. The result is a film that feels like a broken-down house with a fresh coat of paint or two hastily applied to try to cover the cracks. Problem is ... they missed a few spots.

Here's what they basically got right: the personalities and humor of the Turtles themselves. Whoever did a script-polish on this thing to flesh out the Turtles' antics and witty banter deserves credit. The Turtles are likable and funny, and their personalities feel pretty much spot-on as compared to the classic cartoons and films. In fact, I may even go so far as to say that the Turtles feel a little more distinct in this incarnation than in some others - each Turtle has a unique look (i.e. they are not just color-swapped clones of each other), and each has a very distinguishable persona. Perhaps they go a little far in this regard at times (did brilliant-scientist Donatello really need to be a full-on glasses-sporting geek? probably not). But I think that what carries the movie through its weaker points is that the Turtles pretty much are done right. Michelangelo is the show-stealer, no question. He has some genuinely funny quips, and kids will love him. Rafael is suitably badass. Leonardo is, as ever, the more serious and contemplative team leader. Many have rightfully called out the movie's short-but-excellent elevator scene as a prime example of how well the movie captures the fun and goofy chemistry between the brothers. Even if the relationship tropes are well-worn at this point (must Leonardo and Raphael have a falling out in every TMNT movie?), there's nothing that feels inherently off (at least with the Turtles - there are, however, some awkward and slightly creepy come-ons from Will Arnett's Vernon to the much-younger April O'Neil). These are the Turtles we know and love, and they are entertaining and likable.

What does the movie not get so right? The story and plotting. The plot of the movie a.) makes little to no sense, and b.) seems to crib from the worst aspects of many major modern blockbusters. One issue is, again, the appearance that large portions of the script were axed last-minute and hastily re-written. Going into this movie, I was under the impression that William Fichtner played arch-villain Shredder. Turns out, he does not. This is not a spoiler or big reveal. Fichtner plays evil businessman/scientist Eric Sacks, a former colleague of April O'Neil's father, who also happens to be in league with Shredder. Shredder is played by Tohoru Masamune, but mostly appears as a CGI videogame boss who moves and attacks like a character from Tekken. But, pretty clearly, at some point ... William Fichtner was supposed to have been Shredder. His back-story sets him up to be the movie's Big Bad. And he even has the Shredder armor ominously on-display in his palatial manor. He glares at it knowingly, clearly foreshadowing that, yup, this dude is going to be Shredder. But such is not the case. And that's theoretically okay, since most Turtles fans wanted Shredder to be a Japanese ninja master, and not William Fichtner (yes, William Fichtner is awesome-as-crap, but not really cut-out for Shredder). But what's not okay in practice is that Shredder - the biggest and baddest nemesis of the Turtles - is essentially a non-character in this film. There's no real personal connection to the Turtles or Splinter (one of the most memorable aspects, certainly, of the original movie), and, worse, the guy has no real motivations or reason-for-being except because, you know, evil and stuff. Ol' Chrome Dome deserves better. 

Meanwhile, multiple key story elements seem cut-and-pasted in chaotic and often frustrating fashion. The evil plan of Sacks and Shredder to bring NYC to its knees makes little sense. The Turtles' mutated blood ends up being a lazy sort of MacGuffin that seems to just be a concession to the fact that, "hey, every big movie is doing 'magic blood' plot devices these days, so we might as well hop aboard the bandwagon." That said, much of the story revolves not around the Turtles themselves, but around April (Megan Fox), and *her* back-story. Turns out, the Turtles were actually a young April's pets and her scientist father's test subjects. When Sacks turned on April's father and destroyed his lab, April saved the Turtles (but for some reason dumped them in the sewer ...?), who, unknown to her, were exposed to mutagen and on their way to becoming giant mutant turtle superheroes. All of this is problematic on many levels. For one, having April be the one with an eventual vendetta against Sacks is okay in and of itself ... but again, it means that the Turtles and Splinter have no real rivalry of their own - they are really fighting April's battle. For another thing, the details of all this back-story barely add up. There's lots of seemingly-contradictory stuff in the script, and there's a lot that simply makes no sense. Yes, this is TMNT and a certain degree of suspension-of-disbelief is required., but asking for a coherent plot that gets you emotionally invested should not be that much of a tall order. 

One more pet peeve about the Turtles' origin story, as told to us in the movie by Splinter (slight SPOILERS ahead): apparently, he found a book about ninjas that washed up into the sewer, taught himself to be a ninja, and then taught the Turtles to be ninjas. So ... WTF? Isn't the whole point of ninjitsu that it's a secret and deadly art that can't just be learned from a book? It's a seemingly minor point, but it sort of undermines something that was always cool about the original cartoons and comics and films: they took the "ninja" part of the title seriously. Seriously. A huge part of my fascination with TMNT stemmed from my parallel fascination with martial arts, ninjas, etc. Between the fact that this film's Splinter just taught himself to be a ninja from a book, and the non-character that is Shredder, and the non-entity that is The Foot Clan ... this movie does not feel very ninja-y. Someone did not get the memo that the "ninja" part of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" is, indeed, the best part. 

As for what in the movie is a mixed bag ... I'd point to the visuals and action. First, I'll speak to the character design of the Turtles. I still don't love 'em, but they are also not *as* bad as I originally thought. In motion, the Turtles don't look as ugly and scary as they do in still photos. And yet, let's just acknowledge that the decision to give the Turtles human-like noses, with nostrils, was a horrible one. It looks bad, and it makes the Turtles look too freakish and monstrous. The basic design of the Turtles was classic, and this was an ill-advised change. That said, it's no coincidence that the Turtles here look straight out of an XBOX game. They move like videogame characters, and the action scenes whip and zoom like they're hopped-up on Mountain Dew: Code Red. Mostly, they are fun and riveting - as with a roller-coaster like vehicular chase scene down a snowy mountain range. However, when the battles become more personal, there is undoubtedly a weightlessness to the fights that causes an emotional remove. Oddly, the movie's climactic fight with Shredder is quite similar to the final fight in the original Turtles film. But while that battle is a classic confrontation that kids quoted and re-enacted for years to come, this one is cool, in the moment, but ultimately pretty forgettable. In short, the movie's action excels at being pure amusement-park ride fun, but doesn't quite pack the punch to truly feel epic and memorable from a narrative perspective.

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES isn't *that* bad. In many ways, in tone and personality, it feels surprisingly reminiscent of the classic cartoons. It's got moments that are a lot of fun, and it's never as offensive or insultingly stupid as the Transformer movies. Director Jonathan Liebsman could learn a thing or two about giving his action weight and emotional heft, but undoubtedly, he crafts slicker and more coherent action scenes than producer Michael Bay. But some exciting action scenes and some funny moments still can't fully cover for the fact that the core of this movie was probably never very strong to begin with. It's not a huge leap to assume that a lot of last-minute band-aids were applied to the film to try to fix a host of major plot issues - but the band-aids can only do so much. This is frustrating, because, man, how hard can it be to write a kick-ass TMNT story? If one understands the elements that fans love most about the franchise, it shouldn't be rocket-science. The upside is that the elements are there, at least in part, to take the base of this film and do better with a sequel. Nothing here is broken beyond repair (well, except for those nostrils).

It's not like there's some gold standard of TMNT story that I want to see replicated. I'm not *that* blinded by nostalgia, and I also don't know the comics well enough to point to the source material as an ideal. Here's what I do know: those old TMNT cartoons - despite all the merchandising and cash-ins - were so gleefully weird, and such a crazy gateway into so many cool things (underground comics, martial arts, sci-fi) - that my hope is for the franchise - if it continues - to continue to be that gateway for kids. It's funny, because Guardians of the Galaxy was, in some ways, like a modern-day TMNT - a rock n' roll trip through The Weird that was both funny and imagination-expanding. This Turtles has moments of fun-unleashed, but it feels a little too cynically-created, and a lot too assembled-by-committee, to truly get one tripping on Turtle Power. But hey, at least that Wiz Khalifa song ("Shell-shocked!") that plays over the ending credits is pretty awesome.

My Grade: C+

ELYSIUM Is Good, But Not In District 9's League

ELYSIUM Review:

- Neill Blomkamp's first feature film was the monumental District 9 - and, man, that's a tough first act to follow. District 9 was like a sci-fi thunderbolt a few years back - a movie that seemed to come out of nowhere, leapfrogging over the more-hyped, bigger-budgeted summer movie competition and becoming not just *the* movie of that summer, but an Oscar-nominated instant classic. Hate if you will, but District 9 mixed social satire science fiction with adrenaline-pumping, balls-to-the-wall action like few other genre films ever have. Suffice it to say, as soon as the film was over, I was primed and ready for whatever it was that Blomkamp had up his sleeve for his next trick.

Now, after a seemingly interminable wait, we finally have the director's sophomore effort, ELYSIUM. And yes, going in, expectations were high. Blomkamp's debut was so stellar and meteoric that you had to question what he could possibly do to top it. And you had to wonder if this movie would cement him as the next great blockbuster director, or if it would relegate him to one-hit-wonder status.

The semi-frustrating fact is that, post-Elysium, it's still hard to say. Elysium has moments that call to mind the visual electricity and high-concept shock-and-awe of District 9. But it also is not in the same league, overall, as that film. I remain confident that Blomkamp has it in him to make many more great films. But I also think that, to do so, he'll have to learn from the mistakes of what has to be considered a bit of a sophomore slump.

It's funny, because District 9 managed to amaze by starting small and then pulling back the lens to reveal a much larger scope and scale than was originally anticipated. Elysium, on the other hand, starts big, but becomes increasingly insular as it goes. But I will say: the opening scenes of the film paint a breathtaking picture of a future-world dystopia. In a well-done bit of world-building, we're introduced to an earth that is now an ugly, rubble-filled wasteland in which money, resources, and hope are scarce. All of the planet's well-off citizens have fled to Elysium, a utopian space station that hovers above earth's orbit. Those stuck on earth work in poor conditions in giant factories, manufacturing goods and tech used by the Elysians, but hoarded and kept away from earth. The factory that our main character, Max, works in produces robots that are used as police on earth, and as servants and guards on Elysium. Meanwhile, the most precious piece of tech on Elysium are the medical bays that, almost magically, can heal nearly all wounds and sickness. Frequently, bands of desperate, ailing earth denizens try to smuggle themselves to Elysium in order to make a mad border dash for the healing bays. Most find themselves greeted with deadly force by an unsympathetic government.

And so, Elysium positions itself as one hell of a 1% vs. 99% sci-fi parable. I was on the edge of my seat for the movie's opening scenes, totally caught up in this world - both the striking dystopian/utopian visuals, and the possibilities for social commentary that such a world allowed for. I'll talk more about the visuals for a second, and just say that Blomkamp is clearly one of the best there is at sci-fi world-building from a visual standpoint. The budget upgrade from District 9 allows him to give us the big, wide shots that show top-down views of these two contrasting places: the ruined buildings, slums, and poverty of earth, and the sleek, green, ultra-modern eden that is Elysium. Blomkamp has a way of casually shooting sci-fi: i.e. giving these worlds a lived-in quality, showing us the far-out as mundane, that is unique. Like the way that police robots patrol earth and deal with citizen misconduct. There's a thrilling, Star Wars-esque quality to the way that Blomkamp shoots stuff like this.

But where Blomkamp falters in ELYSIUM is, shockingly, the big action scenes. Pick any still frame of the big set pieces, and they'll probably look awesome. But somehow, for his second film, Blomkampf has largely abandoned the cleaner, more old-school action style of District 9, in favor of a whole lot of shaky cam and Michael Bay-style rapid-fire cuts. It's funny, because District 9 felt like such an antithesis to movies like Transformers when it came out. But here, Blomkamp undermines his own action scenes by cutting them all to hell. It's a shame, because if nothing else, the guy has a sense for putting stuff into his movies that's just inherently cool. In District 9, we got the mech. In Elysium, it's the laser-shield that Sharlto Copley's character wields. And it's the aforementioned police robots going robo-crazy and kicking ass. There are action sequences in Elysium that are pretty damn badass on a conceptual level. But for some reason, a lot of them are shot close-in and rapid-fire - taking away some of the awe and wonder and fun.

The action scenes aren't the only thing that feel more bland and generic as opposed to District 9. Even more importantly, the characters of the film just don't pop, for the most part, like they should. Chiefly, Matt Damon's Max is pretty vanilla. Max is a worker on earth who was once a low-level criminal, but who is now trying to go straight by making an honest living in a robot factory. However, when Max's pushy boss forces him to make a potentially dangerous repair to fix a system malfunction, Max gets trapped in a hazardous area and is doused with deadly radiation. Max finds out that he's now only got five days to live. Desperate and angry, he tracks down his old criminal buddies, and convinces them to help him get to Elysium. His hope is to get to a healing chamber and cure his condition. The gang agrees to help, if Max agrees to help them rob a top-level Elysium fat cat. They outfit Max with a souped-up exoskeleton armor suit, and away they go.

Here's the thing: Max's arc is supposed to be that he's initially just trying to live and survive, but, eventually, he takes on a deeper sense of purpose and becomes a sort of messianic figure. Okay, good in theory - but it's touched on in only the most fleeting ways in the film. What should have been an epic character arc ends up feeling limp and by-the-numbers. For most of the film, Max just feels like Matt Damon playing an everyman, and there's never any real doubt as to where this is all heading. Everything about Max feels half-baked and not-that-interesting. The flashbacks to his childhood raised by nuns? Just sort of there. His relationship with Frey, a childhood friend and potential love interest? No real spark. I really had no feeling one way or the other as to whether or not they should end up together. Max in this movie is, frankly, just sort of a boring dude. The script doesn't particularly serve the character well or make him all that interesting, and Damon also doesn't really provide enough gravitas or emotion to make him all that epic or awesome (for some reason, I kept thinking of a 70's version of this film starring Charlton Heston, and how badass that might have been).

Overall, there is a sense of Elysium being a movie that isn't fully sketched in. Max as a character feels loosely-drawn and sort of vague. And the same is true for the whole movie. That feeling starts with the characters. Jodie Foster's Delacourt - Elysium's unfeeling Secretary of Defense - is okay as a sinister corporate villain type, but we never *really* get into the psychology of why she is the way she is. Elysium as a whole, for that matter. How did it evolve to be the way it is? How did this segregation start? Why is tech like the healing chambers kept from those on earth? And how did Elysium's uncaring, totalitarian-esque government come to be? I'm not saying I need all the details. But I want to feel like all of those details have been fully thought through. I wanted to feel like this world fully makes sense, even if we aren't explicitly told all the details.

And that's where the holes in ELYSIUM begin to show. Because on some level, this feels like a movie with a great premise, but like a movie in which the premise ultimately gives way to Blomkamp's desire for cool action scenes and videogame-esque pyrotechnics. I think about Sharlto Copley's role as Kruger, a wild-man hired gun who does Delacourt's bidding on earth. Copley is incredibly fun here. He goes for broke, and turns in a totally off-the-rails, unhinged performance. It's a great, memorably villainous turn. The problem is that Kruger is cool and badass in and of himself, but it really makes no sense that he gets so much screentime given the story that the movie sets out to tell. It's like if Bobba Fett ended up becoming the big bad of Star Wars just by virtue of his coolness. Someone needed to remind Blomkamp that like Star Wars, Elysium is a story about rebels vs. the evil empire. And as such, the movie should build to a confrontation with said empire. But Blomkamp seems to fall in love with Kruger and his kewl laser-shield, at the expense of his own story. It also feels like there was a missed opportunity with William Fichtner's awesomely sinister corporate overlord character, John Carlyle. Carlyle feels like the natural villain of the film, and Fichtner is great in the part, as always. But Carlyle is taken off the board pretty early, even though he's the one who seems to represent all that is wrong with Elysium and who, other than Delacourt, is most interested in protecting its exclusive way of life. By the time the movie reaches its climax, it's more about a bunch of guys fighting *just because*, and not much more. That's the inherent problem with Elysium as it goes on - for a movie that is purportedly *about* stuff, many scenes feel sort of devoid of thematic resonance or relevance.

To the movie's credit and to its detriment, it seriously seems to emulate the structure of a videogame. The plot progression feels less about organic character arcs and well-timed twists, and more about Max simply progressing from one "level" to the next. What this means is that there's an inevitability to the plot and how it unfolds that zaps the movie of a lot of tension. The ending feels like a foregone conclusion long before it happens. Rather than toy with our expectations, the movie pretty much just follows them from Point A to Point B. This means that the film - though action-packed - feels oddly slow at times.

And yet, there are still those moments where we are reminded that Blomkamp knows how to crank things up a notch and just bring the awesome. His knack for character and creature design is pretty amazing. The robots in this movie look phenomenal. The vehicles and landscapes as well. And what I like about Blomkamp is that he never seems to tone things down for the mass audience. In Elysium, the scene where Damon gets the exoskeleton grafted to him is just absolutely, awesomely brutal. Later on, a scene in which a mutilated Kruger attempts to use a healing bay to stay alive - it's just classic, old-school gore (the f/x used even look practical - right out of an old John Carpenter flick). Speaking of which, the movie uses a lot of practical sets and f/x, and it really shows. It helps add to that feeling of lived-in grittiness.

Other than Fichtner's Carlyle, my favorite character in the film was Wagner Moura's Spider - the leader of the band of criminals/rebels who give support to Max. Moura cranks things up to eleven, and is just totally over-the-top in the role. But it's a kind of over-the-top that fits, because unlike Damon, Moura conveys the rage and frustration of the earth people, and that rage gives the movie a spark that Max alone does not. On the flip side of things, Diego Luna is pretty meh as Julio, Spider's associate and Max's best friend. Same goes for Alice Braga as Frey. A weak character that Braga is unable to elevate.

ELYSIUM maintains some of District 9's edginess. The R-rating allows for a level of grittiness that you don't always associate with big-budget genre fare. At the same time, there is that sort of sense that mo' money created mo' problems for Blomkamp and team. District 9 was so scrappy and rock n' roll ... some of that is still evident in Elysium, but there's also a sense that there was pressure on Blomkamp to go back to the same well he'd had success with once, even if he'd already said what he needed to say about segregation and discrimination with his first film. Maybe he needs to work with some other writers. Maybe he just needs to tackle a wholly different genre or theme. But whatever the case may be, you can't help but feel like Elysium is the warmed-over leftovers to District 9's main course. It's sleeker and filled with bigger stars, but the heart and soul and wow-factor just isn't there. Look, Blomkamp can do kick-ass sci-fi in his sleep, and I am still firmly onboard the Blomkamp bandwagon. But Elysium is a bump in the road on the path to legendary status. Let's see what the guy can do with his next film.

My Grade: B