When a film about turtles hurtles past with the pace of a hare, you know that cinematic mutation is at play. When Megan Fox plays a character that wants to be taken seriously, you realise that the director has a wicked sense of humour. When a Hollywood biggie seemingly draws inspiration from Krissh , you snigger that their beasts can be as shallow as ours.
Assembled for the fans of popular comic book characters, it is about a quartet of turtles that accidently gets mutated to take the form of giant warriors. Together, they take on the avaricious scientist Saks (Fichtner is suitably sinister) who is responsible for their overgrowth and who has evil designs to gas out the New York City so that he can encash his antidote and become the saviour.
The storyline is as slim as the waistline of Fox who plays April, an intrepid reporter eager to shed the tag of candy. She happens to come across these teenaged vigilantes and finds that she has a past connection with them. Fox knows she is the froth that April hates to be and plays along with Ritchson.
As they take on the foot soldiers of Saks, the fantasy turns into an innocuous fun-tasy for the inside jokes keep coming and the action choreography brings alive the most stale of situations. Yes, it is the same old hanging from skyscrapers, the same old last minute diffusion of threat but the turtles inhabited by Ploszak, Howard and Fischer ensure that the jolly moments defy the gravity of logic. It is a kind of film where the director shoots an action spectacle in a snowy region without explaining its existence in a film set in New York and you don’t want to ask either. Following the sensibilities of producer Michael Bay, Leibesman transforms it into a guilty pleasure for teenagers in all age groups.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle
Genre: Fantasy/ Adventure
Director: Jonathan Leibesman
Cast: Megan Fox, Alan Ritchson, Pete Ploszak, Jeremy Howard, Noel Fischer, William Fichtner
Bottomline : As dazzlingly junk as the pizza it unabashedly promotes
