Review: 'Ninja Turtles' gets dark, digital reboot

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were first seen in comic books way back in 1984. Since capturing the fancy of the audience, this franchise spun off to have its own cartoon series, toys, video games, and of course, films.

The first TMNT live-action film was shown in 1990, followed by two sequels. In 2007, a CGI-animated film simply entitled "TMNT" was shown. This current TMNT film is a live action-computer-generated motion capture combination-style reboot of the franchise, produced by Michael Bay and directed by Jonathan Liebesman.

In this reboot, we start at the very beginning again, before the world knew about the turtles. April O'Neil (Megan Fox) is a TV journalist who desperately wants to be taken seriously at work. When she incidentally witnesses shadowy figures fighting against some criminals, she reports them to her boss, who of course does not believe her. She later discovers that these unseen vigilantes are actually four young overgrown turtles with ninja fighting skills.

From there, we will again be told the origins of our four "heroes in a half-shell" who are named after Italian Renaissance painters. There will be certain big changes in the story of how the turtles came to be from how we used to know it. Their Sensei rat Splinter learned his awesome martial arts skills from a book. It also showed how April first knew the Splinter and the turtles as a little girl in her scientist dad's laboratory.

When main villain Shredder (this time in an all-metallic suit armed with boomeranging blades) finds out where the turtles' lair was, he and his henchmen attack it and abduct three of them captive in order to suck out their blood to extract the secret super formula that runs in them. Of course, the bad guys leave one turtle, as well as April and her driver/admirer Vernon (Will Arnett), to save the day. You know how this story will end, so that should not a spoiler, is it?

When Michael Bay's name is attached to a film, we expect wild action and big explosions, and we won't be disappointed here in that regard. The "cowabunga" action sequences still ruled! Even Splinter had a grand martial arts fight scene with Shredder. This reboot is for the young kids of today so it is acceptable and understandable that everything felt so juvenile. The sense of humor in these action scenes is also juvenile, most of the visual jokes would be best appreciated by young kids. Most adults could muster a smile at least.

Megan Fox seems to be Michael Bay's muse, as she also appeared in Bay's other franchise, "Transformers." She is no doubt beautiful, but unfortunately her acting sadly remains to be very amateurish. David Arnett is not really any help if his function here is to be the comic relief. His character was actually extraneous with corny lines.

However, the best part of film remains to be the Turtles themselves. They are as we know them: Leonardo, the serious leader; Raphael, the hotheaded one; Michaelangelo, the whimsical one; and Donatello, the smart one. They were made to look a little darker, heftier and angrier, like most classical superheroes are expected to look these days. No more bright cheerful colors allowed, it seems.

Nevertheless, these Turtles are still fun and funny for the younger set, and fondly amusing for the parents. That silly elevator scene is proof of this appeal. These cool Turtles will endure despite the uneven quality of this film reboot. 5/10

This review was originally published in the author's blog, "Fred Said."

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Review: New 'Transformers' is lavishly overblown

Director Michael Bay sets "Transformers: Age of Extinction," the fourth installment of the Transformers film franchise, further into the future after the Battle of Chicago from the last film.

At this time, man is waging a war against all alien robots, including our friendly Autobots. In fact, all the Autobots have been destroyed except for five: the ever-dependable Bumblebee, the green paratrooper Crosshairs, the cigar-chomping and bearded Hound, the blue samurai-like Drift, and, of course, everybody's all-time favorite, Optimus Prime.

For the human characters, gone are the Witwickys and enter the Yeagers. Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg) is a down-on-his-luck engineer and frustrated inventor of household robots. He has a pretty (and irritatingly petty) 17-year old daughter Tessa (Nicola Peltz), whom he guards like a hawk. But, of course, she has a secret boyfriend Shane (Jack Raynor), who is a race car driver.

When Cade bought a rundown trailer truck for $150 to fix up, little did he know that he was buying the damaged Optimus Prime himself, putting him and his family right in the path of the government people, led by the double-dealing Harold Attinger (Kelsey Grammar). Attinger seeks to destroy all Transformers for good, but has ironically connived with the ruthless mercenary robot Lockdown to do the job.

The action brings the Yeagers and the Autobots from Texas to Beijing, then Hong Kong, battling not only human soldiers, but also fantastic new robots created by the arrogant Joshua Joyce (Stanley Tucci) and his company. These were made from a new programmable element called "Transformium" obtained from remnants of destroyed Transformers, including Megatron, whose evil "spirit" has somehow entered the new leader robot Galvatron.

You can see from the lengthy synopsis that there are many new characters, both human and robot, that go in and out of this story. It can get difficult to remember and follow all of them. The filmmakers themselves seemed to have difficulty taking inventory of all the characters at the end. I have not even mentioned the robot T- Rex Grimlock and the other Dinobots, which also make their spectacular debut in this film.

The film runs more than two hours and a half. The story telling is very uneven, with a pace that was off-putting and even strangely boring at times. The introductory scenes at the Yaeger farm went on for so long. The lines were generally corny clichés with lame humor or sappy sentiment, like before. There were a lot of blatant product placement ads, most memorably Bud Light. Only when the Transformers come out and actually fight with explosive flair does the movie truly come alive.

The film is generally entertaining with lavish special visual and sound effects, done Michael Bay-style. The Transformers remain to be awesome robots which transform into the sleekest models of cars and trucks. It was fun to see OP act like Voltes V and fight with a sword and see Grimlock breathe fire. There are some very exciting car chase scenes and martial arts fight scenes (of course, they were in China!) for the human characters as well, not that they were all that necessary for the story. Stanley Tucci steals his scenes in his humorous take on an annoying character.

However, "Age of Extinction" simply tried to stuff in too much that it already felt bloated and tedious at several points. Even with all his physical ability, Mark Wahlberg did not seem to be a right fit to be the main human protagonist of this franchise. I can't believe I am saying this, but I think I actually enjoyed the messy Shia Lebeouf films more than I did this one. 6/10

This review was originally published in the author's blog, "Fred Said."

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com