Now before I begin this review let me clear the fact that this MOVIE is aiming for the new younger audience. This movie is not focusing on aiming for the fans of the past generation. So lets look at it this way.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is directed by Jonathan Liebsman and Produced by Michael Bay. It stars Megan Fox as April O'Neil, and 4 turtles who don't look that good with the CGI. With this kind of set up, its already predictable that this would be a disaster.

As I watched this movie in a theater packed with a tremendous amount of children. I guess I could say, this movie was entertaining for me. The stars of the movie are, hands down the Turtles especially Mikey. They stole the movie in every scene they were in, and I would watch a 1 hour movie with just all of them goofing around and making jokes. However, in fact the movie often negates the fact that the turtles are the main subject in this movie, it circles it's story mostly around April O'Neil. As for her character, I found her annoying at many times. And because Michael Bay has something to do with this movie, Megan Fox had to do scenes for the "benefit' of Bay as usual. Going back to the turtles, I think that they had nailed them and captured everything that we loved about them, the movie is worth watching because of them. The Villains are one of the weak points of this film. Shredder is a very dull, boring and predictable villain. He is only there for what I believe is fan service. Other than that, his motives are unclear and the reason he is in this movie is for the battle scenes.

As for the story, it is filled with unbelievable amounts of cliché. Because of this, I had no choice but to be irritated at times or sometimes these scenes gave no effect to me whatsoever even if the main intention of the scene was entirely different. The evil plot of the villain, was downright cringe worthy, plot holes were circling from there and there. . Clichés and plot holes aside, the story is what I would imagine for children and all of us were to look it that way, then I guess I could say the plot was alright I guess. The action sequences were just OK, there were some that were interesting and some that was incredibly DIFFICULT to watch. I know Michael Bay didn't direct this, but My God. Every Michael Bay action-cliché is in this movie. The Slow Motion, Explosions, Attractive Women and the incredibly shaky camera. I almost felt dizzy watching some of the action sequences.

At the end of the day, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a great movie to watch if you want bonding times with your kids or if you're totally high or craving for some pizza. In my opinion, it won't ruin your childhood, in fact it might even remind and bring back old memories of your childhood, with the many references being made in this movie. The kids will love this movie and I recommend everyone to bring pizza while watching it.

A dull and boring villain, a mediocre plot filled with a massive amount of clichés and Michael Bay style action sequences. without the Turtles, this movie would be pure trash.

Verdict: 6.5/10

Micheal Bay produced the TMNT franchise with updated CGI and a more Transformers like action sequences with a heavy dose of cheesiness.

Reporter April O'Neil (Megan Fox) discovers the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were her childhood pets that had been injected with a mutagent by a corporation run by her late father and his partner Eric Sacks (William Fichtner.) Her cameraman Vern Fenwick (Will Arnett) tries to help her out while everyone thinks she is crazy about her rantings of vigilante turtles. Meanwhile a criminal gang led by Shredder plan to unleash a virus throughout the city.

The film is entertaining for kids and is undemanding fun. There are explosions, dramatic and over the top action sequences, plenty of quips, a comedy sidekick in Will Arnett. The film avoids the flabbiness that marred the Transformer sequels and like a McDonalds cheeseburger, it fills you up in the short term and would soon be quickly forgotten. Still nothing wrong with a bit of mindless diet of junk every now and then.

Hands down, even many decades after their creation, everybody still knows and somewhat appreciates the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles". That's why many, especially the fans I guess, must have been curious when they heard that the franchise is going to be rebooted in live action with a 2014 release. And this first film must have been successful enough as a sequel was greenlighted not much later. But in terms of quality, it is really far from enough unfortunately. The fact that I did not like the looks of the Turtles that much is purely subjective I guess, but the story just felt so generic, predictable and there is absolutely nothing individual to it I must say. And is this really a Turtles film? I must say I felt that it was really more "April O'Neil: The Movie". The reason for that may have been that they got Megan Fox to play the character and she is still quite a huge star, so probably demanded lots of screen time and a plot that revolves around her in order to say yes to this franchise. But apart from the fact that Fox is not a very talented actress, the story about her character also isn't effective at all. The plot about her dead father and with Fichtner's character responsible for the death feels so predictable and desperate to evoke emotions that it's almost cringeworthy. I think Fichtner is a fairly solid villain actor, even if he occasionally feels like a poor man's Christopher Walken, but he is still one of the better things about the film, even if he has very little to work with here. It is all about putting Fox in the spotlight, never about a good story.

Now about the Turtles: I think that neither they, nor Splinter and especially not Shredder fulfilled the great potential they had in terms of filmmaking perspective. Of course, it is quite a difficult challenge to construct a film about a life-sized rat and four life-sized turtles (especially with the joking around) as you have to give it the comedic approach at times. But here it did not ring true for the most part. The balance between comedy and moments in which the film takes itself so seriously went pretty wrong most of the time. It is very shocking to see so many writers busy with the script here and the result is such a very weak outcome. About Will Arnett ("Arrested Development"), who is basically included for the human comic relief, the film intensified my opinion about him as an actor. His comedy can work in the right context and setting and some of his jokes work too, but most of the time you can feel the writers' desperate attempt at going for some cheap laughter. But what distracted me the most about him is the make-up and how they tried so hard to make him look 10 years younger than he actually is, so that we can accept him as a love interest for Fox' character. It's just another from a long list of oddities (in a negative sense) when it comes to this film. I saw the sequel received slightly better rating and reviews, but after seeing this one, I must say I have very little interest to check out movie number two. The Turtles are a great challenge from a cinematic perspective, no doubt about it, and the people who made this movie here weren't up to it. I give these 100 minutes a thumbs-down. The title characters deserve much better. Not recommended.