I feel like I might be offending people by saying this, but generally when you watch TMNT, you don't really take it seriously. I mean, it's giant talking turtles who eat pizza, live in a sewer, and were raised by a rat. You kind of have to watch it for the cheese, and you end up buying into their universe, and then you're sucked in and you can't stop. The 2014 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles doesn't have a consistent universe, and you never get invested in the film. Ever.
The film opens with a brief explanation of the Foot Clan, a ninja-gang that roams the streets, committing crimes left and right. (Not that we need the explanation...after twenty minutes, the Foot Clan is rarely seen again.) We're also introduced to April O'Neil, a lifestyle reporter who wants to report on substantial news. She's so ambitious, she's willing to risk her life (multiple times!) to shoot crappy video on her iPhone in half-successful attempts to get her big break. While following Foot Clan suspects to a dock, she discovers that masked vigilantes are stopping the Foot Clan in their tracks, and puts herself into even greater danger by telling basically everyone she knows that the masked vigilantes are turtles. So therefore, the teenage mutant ninja turtles take her to their lair in the sewer, and together they attempt to uncover the Foot Clan's plan and take down the Clan's sinister leader, Shredder.
The entire film focused on April O'Neil, with the turtles as a nice side plot, which definitely should have been flipped around, especially in a movie called "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles". The film tries its hardest to put O'Neil into the turtles' troubled past, but without any setup, the entire O'Neil + turtles backstory seems contrived and convenient. Although Megan Fox can be a halfway decent actress, she would have been much more convincing if she hadn't played the exact same character in Transformers (thanks, Michael Bay). Originally an interesting, three-dimensional side character, April O'Neil is turned into a flat, generic "heroine" who is more stupid than brave...and then we're forced to watch an entire film about her.
It's pretty obvious that much more time was spent on the CGI and the action sequences than the script. Every turtle has one personality trait. Michaelangelo is the sassy one, Leonardo is the responsible leader, Raphael is moody and rebellious, and Donatello is kind of geeky (he even wear glasses). The characters were pretty one-dimensional, and they remain the same throughout the movie. I don't think one character developed during the entire course of the film. Maybe you could make a case for Donatello, but it would be hard to find evidence.
The one redeeming quality of the film is the special effects. In this day and age, there's really no excuse for poor special effects. When we go to the movies, we have high expectations SFX-wise, and TMNT delivered. A lot of the fight sequences with Shredder vs. the turtles evoked video game images. The shots used are quite similar to those used in video games, I'm guessing because both shots rely so heavily on motion capture. This wasn't necessarily a bad thing, as a lot of the action shots were quite cool. They were almost the exact opposite of The Hunger Games: lots of smooth, wide shots were you can see everything happening in the fight without getting a splitting headache. I thought it was well executed.
I was looking forwards to this film, but came out disappointed. It tried too hard, couldn't find a balance between silly and serious, and ultimately failed to capture the spirit of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that the majority of the world has come to know and love.
