 In 2007, Michael Baycraft did a movie experience unlike any other at the time. A Hasbro toy line brought to the big screen in epic fashion, produced by Steven Spielberg, huge budget, big stars, and even bigger robots. I mean, Autobots that are technically aliens, but you know what I'm saying. This franchise would go and go and go to the point where if you weren't replicating the success, then you were just doing it wrong. And so when it was announced that a brand new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reboot would come out in 2014, produced by Michael Bay, it should have come to the surprise of absolutely no one that this would look, sound, and feel just like a Transformers film, minus one hit Lincoln Park song. Let's talk about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, 2014. Lately I've been doing these longer 16 to 20 minute videos breaking down the entire plot, having some fun doing a bit of a roast on these films that we grew up with. I did Cats, I did Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and now we have Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And this review is brought to you by Gregory Coburn. Gregory is the first guy in hopefully a line of people that become a Patreon member at the unobtainium tier. This is the big tier. Let's talk Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Movie starts with an animated comic book called, Ask Throwback. We have stock dramatic Michael Bay music to lead things in. This is weird. It doesn't fit Ninja Turtles tonally, but we'll see how this plays out. Splinter's narrating, talking to his four sons, the little Ninja Turtles that could, how they're soon gonna finish their training and they will be able to reveal themselves coming out of the shadows to the general public. But don't let this intro fool you. This movie's not about the Ninja Turtles. It's about Megan Fox's character, April O'Neill. She's the star. We're introduced to her doing some good old fashioned reporting. She's grilling a guy about illegal chemical transfers. He denies it, of course, and this is being filmed by Lego Batman, aka Vern. Sidequests aside, we get to the reporting that she's actually good at and that's jumping on a trampoline in yoga gear. Yeah. The script went out of its way to find a reason to get Megan Fox in yoga gear on a tramp and I'm all for it. This movie's perfect so far. Desperate for a big scoop and to be taken seriously as an actress. I mean, reporter. She sneaks into that shipping dock under the cover of night to snap some photos of illegal activity as she sees the foot clan hauling supplies to and fro. These aren't ninjas, by the way, because why would they be? Why would we follow anything from the OG cartoon or the comics? Enter Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. We get teases of the turtles, little glances. They're kept in the shadows as a mystery to us for some reason and we're also getting a lot of uncomfortably close shots of Megan Fox's face, specifically those lip fillers she's rocking. The lips are aggressive in this film. Courtney Cox levels of aggressive in this film. The takeaway here though is she knows there's a vigilante group out there who is thwarting the foot whenever they can. The music is deafening. It's blasting throughout this entire intro so far. I hope it does not keep up like this. Why is it so dramatic? She goes back to work and tells her colleagues about this awesome event she witnessed and the whole vigilante thing. And they of course unreasonably laugh at her for being a stupid young woman. Egotte winner Whoopi Goldberg is for some reason in this movie. She starts grilling O'Neill about what she saw if there's any sort of backup evidence she can provide and there's none, completely useless. I just can't get over Sister Mary Clarence being in this movie. Then again, she was in a film called Theodore Rex back in the day. So maybe she has a thing for the amphibian characters. I don't know. Let's move on. Sax Industries is on the television in the background talking about how they're gonna bring the footclant to justice. Sax Industries. This guy's clearly bad. Every single movie I've seen him in, he's bad. He's a bad guy. And again, Sax Industries was Balls Corporation or Vag Manufacturing already taken. We get our first shot of an unmasked shredder in The Shadows. Everyone is in The Shadows in this film. This whole movie's at night in darkness. It's ridiculous. He's talking to some chick that works for him about the vigilantes. He's not thrilled. And that's the scene. Back to Eric Sax of Asshole Industries. He's now doing a TED talk in front of a bunch of people. They're very happy. They clap. He's great. But he's the bad guy for sure. April O'Neill's there. She likes this guy. She respects him because he knew her dad. I don't think she wants to get in the Sax with Eric but there's respect there. There's props. There's recognition. We see the Ninja Turtles shells because their backs are to us. Why are they in secret still? There's trailers out that people watch. We know what they look like. What is going on? They're watching the news and they don't like what's going on upstairs. I'm not sure why they honestly care. Like they've been hiding out in the sewers all the time. What's it to them? What's going on up top, right? They haven't really been up there outside of nighttime. Maybe to steal a slice of pizza or two but for the most part, they just sit around in dark shadowy corners. They're essentially jaws in this film. Like, oh, what are they gonna look like? We've only seen them in comics and in the cartoons and in video games and with action figures and countless TV remakes. I mean, they've been around a million years. We jump to a subway scene. April's there. The footclanner there and they're rigging this place to blow up. Really, they just want these vigilantes to show up so they can take them out. Big mistake because the turtles do show up but you can't see them. They take out the lights and then they freaking wreck the clan. One guy gets bodied into the side of the subway. Another one gets pummeled to death into a wall. There is no pussy footing around. These guys aren't Batman. They're set to kill. All right, there's no stun on these phasers. The swats show up but the turtles are ghost. April knows though using her investigatory journalism how to track them down by climbing up a fire escape and peekaboo snapping a photo while they're up top having a circle jerk. A celebratory high five. Just bros being bros, you know? But they see her and they're not thrilled. Raphael, the edgiest of the turtles is the first to speak. He's very commanding. He goes over to April with his Batman voice as they point out. Regardless, it's not that intimidating to April O'Neill. In fact, it's really hard to judge what she's thinking. Every time they show Megan Fox, she's just kind of like, I mean, I was captivated but I don't know if anybody else is. And just like something straight out of Transformers, Leonardo yells off in the distance. That's enough, Raph. And then he does a straight up optimist prime flip drop to a hero pose. Music is blaring this whole time. Scan tan tan tan tan tan tan tan tan. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Tan tan tan tan. I don't know what the beat is. It's just obnoxious. This is the first time we finally get a close-up of what these turtles look like and it's no wonder April O'Neill faints shortly after. Hideous design on these creations. Absolutely horrifying stuff. Why are they 10 feet tall? April points out that they're six later. Bullshit. I'm six foot three and some change. These guys are monstrous compared to me. Gurthy, thick boys, chunky boys. And there are essentially many hulks. They are massively strong. There is zero reason they need to be ninjas at all. Now let's get some pros out of the way because there are some voice acting's on point. Really digging Mikey, really digging the whole crew. They sound great. Also the CG, 2014, man. Even those early Transformers films, they all look freaking good. The CG is really detailed. It really matches the environments. The stuff that's been coming out the last five or six years is ass for the most part. Definitely rushed. They're putting so much, they're taxing these animation studios and these 3D rendering companies so much. There's just not time to detail things like we have here. This is some really state-of-the-art visuals. It still holds up really well. It's too bad the design is so awful. Okay, this next spot is genuinely great. We have a little throwback to the Ninja Turtles animated opening where the turtles are jumping along rooftops. They're spinning the bow staff, going straight at the camera while the moon's behind them. Nice little throwback. They're Tony hawking through the sewers and then they all get smashed together in a shell shock formation. I liked it. That was a really good 25 to 30 seconds. The biggest issue is this tone is trash. This doesn't have the feel, the sound, the look of a Ninja Turtles movie at all. Sure, maybe the really edgy old original graphic novels or comics, whatever they were, where they all had red headbands, but even I think that was quite a bit different than what we have here. This is just a weird amalgamation of what they think worked in Transformers and they just shat it onto the Ninja Turtles property. I mean, they even got Megan Fox in this. Come on. And speaking of Fox, she's about to reveal the big plot twist in this movie and that's that she recognizes those turtles. Cause they were her pets back in the day from the lab. These are her pets. Why? There's no reason for this connection to exist, but it does. They're the pets of hers. Back in the sewer, Michelangelo, aka the party dude, announces to his brothers that in not so many words, he wants to bang April O'Neill. He's calling dibs. I can picture it now. Michelangelo dressed in his best trench coat and hat, holding some roses, saunters up to April O'Neill's apartment, knocks on the door, wraps on it if you must, and says, hey, April, I really think you're kind of special. It's me, Mikey. You probably couldn't tell under the disguise. What do you say we go to a movie, grab a slice of zah, and then I can take you back to my place in the sewer where I can cowabang ya. April's back with Whoopie, her boss, trying to give her a clear view of the situation. This doesn't work in her favor and she's shit-canned. Dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee. This just in April. You're fired. Back at the sewer again. Master Splinter has set up some sort of a Ninja Turtles Guantanamo Bay situation where turtles are tortured for information by having slices of pizza put in front of them. They're also doing weird little juggling and balancing act things at the same time. It doesn't last long for Mikey to crack. He tells his dad everything that's been going on, how they've been leaving the sewer, fighting crime. Splinter's not happy. And what really perturbs him is that a woman was able to spot these guys with all their experience to be able to cover in the shadows of night, to be able to jump high and move fast that this woman could still pick up on their scent and spot a massive set of giant freak shows running around, smashing into things. These guys are not subtle at all. He wants his boys to go pick her up and bring her back, steal her basically. She's currently talking to Eric Balsak-Magee in another boring scene. I am checking out of this film hard. There's been almost no action and what action there has been, you can't see shit. My 11 year old son Connor tried watching and this is the point where he bounced. He said, hey dad, I'm out. I'm out. I only got limited screen time and I'm not wasting it on this. He probably went to play Minecraft, which honestly, sounds like a lot better time than what I was doing. She goes to her laptop. It's been hacked by Donnie. Donatello tells her to go meet them on, you guessed it, another dark rooftop. How refreshing. I would not be surprised if she got up there and fucking Bumblebee showed up. They bring her to their sewer palace and she gets to meet their dad Splinter, voiced by Tony Shalhoub, aka Monk. I don't care for this voiceover. This doesn't work for me. It's at this point that Eric Balsak reveals to his master Shredder that the vigilantes are the four test tube turtles from way back in the day. Wait, Eric's bad? What? Insanity! This whole movie is shrouded in secrets and darkness. It's so shadowy. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Sometimes you can see them, now you can't. All right class, pull up a chair. It's story hour. Splinter's gonna regale that classic tale of how his boys became men. They're doing some fun visual stuff here and at one point the preteen Ninja Turtles are watching Gwen Stefani's masterpiece, Hullaback Girl. Few times been around that track in the sabotage scheme of night and night, but you ain't no Hullaback Girl. You ain't no Hullaback Girl. This movie is perfect so far. Storytime also subverts our expectations with another plot change. The Ninja Turtles learn from a book that Splinter found while in the sewer. So they were all just regular animals living out their crappy lives until they were changed into anthropomorphic creatures. And then they learned from Splinter who learned from this book how to be a martial arts master. In the cartoon, I can't speak for the comics. Maybe it's true to that. But in the cartoon, Splinter was a dude who was transformed into a rat. So he already had the knowledge and the expertise. This is an absolute outrage if you cared at all, which I don't. And side note about the rat, he looks awful. The turtle's absolute trash, but this guy, he's covered in Vaseline. He's always sweaty and wet looking. I get that he's a rat. But Jesus, could he be a little classier? Just wash up a little bit, use a towel. We have a quick 30 second cut to Shredder who's suiting up and he says the line, tonight I dine on turtle soup. Splinter is still monologuing. The camera is obsessed with Megan Fox. These close ups of her kind of reacting to things with lip quivers. I don't know if it's because the injections are fighting against her, trying to escape the face. Or that's just kind of how she's acting in the scene because there's no one around her. It's just a bunch of dudes in weird costumes, green screen and shenanigans. After seven hours, we finally get a cool ass action scene and this one doesn't disappoint. Extras from a Michael Bay bad boys film show up and they get their asses handed to them. It's all going well for about three minutes until Transformers Shredder shows up. He's straight up a Decepticon in this thing and he starts kicking the shit out of that poor little rat. April O'Neill at one point tries to help, but again, useless young woman. She gets thrown backwards by Splinter's tail. I think he heard her more than anyone else has in this film. Splinter locks himself into the room with this Transformers-esque abomination. They have a one-on-one cage match while his kids are outside looking in in terror that their sensei father has kept them out. And they try to open the gates, which is odd because these guys are monsters and they can lift stupid amounts of weight. Sometimes they jump through things. I mean, nothing hurts them. We'll get to that in a little while. This music is not quitting for anyone. It is so dramatic and now everything visually is as well. We have a ton of cool-ass slow motion where Shredder's chucking blades, Splinter's dodging them. Like he's Neo in The Matrix, but how long can he keep it up? Well, not too long because soon he's getting his back freaking wracked. He's getting in pain, beaten down on. It's just messy, it's ugly. He even has a sad little rat cry at one point. This movie's perfect so far. This movie went all-in on the drama. There's almost no fun here. This thing's less pleasant than a self-administered colonoscopy. Ralph is presumed dead. Probably because on the inside he is. Splinter could very well be dead too. It's hard to tell because he always looks dead. He's a disgusting rat. April tries to pick up some of the rubble off of Splinter's body, but again, she's a useless young woman. She can't. Ralph, one finger, throws that shit up in the air, blows it away with his breath. He's fucking Superman in this movie. April calls up her number one simp, not including me, Vern. He picks her up and he finds out that the turtles are in fact real and they are just as scary as he didn't think they could be. Now we have Eric Ballsack, McPenis Balls doing a monologue in front of the bad guys. He's about to lay out his full master plan. He's going to release a mutagen contaminant over Manhattan that he sources from the three turtles he's captured and then he's gonna profit by selling them the cure, I think? I kind of lost the plot here. I wasn't really listening. Ralph literally jumps through the side of a fucking van because he's a monster like his brothers and they have no reason to need to know martial arts. He's about to save his bros, but unfortunately Shred Head is there to thwart him. While Chromedome is distracted though, April O'Neill is able to get in there, feed her pets a little bit of adrenaline and this gets him pumped up. Just in time too because it looks like old Shred Head was about to make short work of Ralph. He's actually cracking his shell into the ground. The scene's insane. I thought they were all gonna die. I was on pins and needles and when April was able to save them, I was genuinely shell shocked. I wasn't. I'm not at all. I just want to say that. Our turtles now have only 19 minutes to get to downtown Manhattan and stop this guy from releasing the toxin into the air. The problem is they're on the opening set of Avengers 2 Age of Ultron. Foot Clan all has guns and they start to shoot these guys. Is this gonna be the end for the turtles? How are they possibly good? Well, they're bulletproof. Of course they are. They just block with their shells, block with their dicks. It doesn't matter. Hundreds of bullets are ricocheting and popping off these guys like it's nothing. Back in the day, the turtles would actually have to incorporate some of that skill and some of those lessons they learned in ninjetsu and do flips on cartwheels and spin around and avoid and dodge and use some of their actual martial arts in practice. But these guys are just like, that guy's head's gone. Turtles connect together. Teenage mutant Transformers. Teenage mutant Transformers. Transformers. All right, big battle scene folks and this is the only thing worth watching If I find the clip on YouTube, it's a good 10 minutes. It's a lot of fun, actually. Truly, this is actually fun. They're on top of a semi truck that quickly goes out of control when a rocket flies by, sends them creaming down the side of a giant snow-covered mountain. Purtles are snowboarding on their shells, whipping around cars. Vern almost kills everyone because he's distracted by April and Neil bending over, showing her ass as she's filming out the window. So far, this movie's perfect. I really dig how this is filmed. There's some GoPro-style shots going on, cameras whipping around everywhere. I dig the shit out of the slow motion they're doing. It visually pops. It's bright. You can see the turtles. This is what the whole movie should have been. At this very moment, Eric's sweaty ball sack, McPenis Vagg 69 is setting up the device. The turtles are now in an elevator, performing a quick jam sesh. I dig this part. This is authentic Ninja Turtles right here. What a fun 10-second scene. Now, we have another fun scene, but for the wrong reasons. Eric's sweaty blue ball sack, McPenis Vagg 69 throbbing anal is trying to shoot and kill Vern and April and Neil. And all he has to do is just walk around the side of a counter. They're just hiding down. They don't have weapons of any kind. And he's just like, ah, kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss. Huh, how do you like that? Yeah, kiss. Just walk over here. Just walk right over here. Just go, psh, psh. That's it. But he's, for some reason, on the other side of the counter, like, uh, you're not gonna get away from me next time. Kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss. He doesn't do that, but he should have. I wouldn't be surprised if he did. We are at the final boss battle on rooftop number 14 in this film. They're squaring off against Mega Shredder Tron. He's tossing his blades that he has an unlimited supply of. They're leapfrogging around, or will leap, leapturtling around, I guess. And they eventually best him by playing a game of buck buck. Instead of just tanking towards him, four of them, shoulder to shoulder, and just going, bruh, psh, psh, psh, psh. They do a little hopscotch maneuver. Roth kicks him off the side of the building and says, cowa, fuck yeah. Well, that part didn't happen, but it is PG-13. They could have slipped one F-bomb in if they really wanted. Oh, but Shredder's not actually dead. He's just really mad now. Tink, tink, tink, he's throwing more blades out. Tink, tink, tink, tink, tink, tink, tink, tink, tink, tink. Takes out the tower behind them. It starts to drop. Kish, the turtles are holding it up because again, they're giant freak show monsters with Hulk ability. Grrr. And now we have ourselves an amazing Spider-Man scenario. This tower is gonna drop. And fall it does. Crashing through a Toshiba and Geico building. Megan Fox shows up acting her heart out right now in this scene. Yelling, Shredder! But she's too late to do nothing. The tower is crashing. She's going with it, along with the five others. The four turtles form a rope and grab April right before she hits the ground. Shredder is adjacent to her and they think quickly, swinging her perfectly like Shia on a vine in the crystal skull. And she kicks Shredder right into the chest, dropping Shredder, hundreds of stories to absolutely not his death. He'll hit the ground hard. Every bone in his body broken, of course, but he'll just skirt into the sewer below. I'll get you next time, turtles, in the sequel. April kinda defeated Shredder. Maybe she's not completely useless after all. Maybe she's in fact a strong female lead. And quite frankly, for the Ninja Turtles franchise, it's about time. This movie is perfect so far. At this point, the music is ratcheted up to a thousand. I can't hear what anybody's saying. My ears are bleeding. The turtles reunite with Master Splinter down in the sewer. I looked and could not believe that the runtime for this was only an hour 41. It feels like two and a half hours. We end, of course, at night under an overpass where Vern is going to presumably propose to April. But then those pesky turtles show up in their new turtle van. Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do. No, no, no, no, no, don't tell me we're gonna keep this movie going. Mikey cracks a couple of jokes, accidentally fires a rocket, which blows up Vern's car. Everybody laughs, they drive away. We have a couple more uncomfortably close shots of Megan Fox's face and lips. And then we're in full turtle power as these credits finally come up and the sweet release of this film is finally upon me. Well, that's 2014's Transformers, I mean Ninja Turtles, which should really be called April O'Neill, featuring her four Ninja Turtle pets. It's really an April O'Neill story. At the end of the day, the turtles don't really show up until the second half of the flick. Then it becomes more in line with what I'm familiar with, but still, the character designs are awful. From the onset, this was a bad choice. Six feet, my ass. These things are monsters. These are nine feet tall, bare men. Let me know your thoughts though. Did you grow up with this one? Do you have a soft spot for it? You still love it and think everything I'm saying is complete cockatooie, asinine nonsense. Let me know in the comments either way. Please like the video if you had a good time. Subscribe if you haven't. I post tons of movie related content each and every week and I'm really enjoying these throwback, rant style roast videos, giving me something a little fresh on the channel in between movie reviews. And hopefully you're enjoying them as well. All right, cowabunga.