Turtles

Last night I, semi-reluctantly, went to see the new TMNT film with some friends. The original trailer peaked my interest and brought back lots of nostalgic memories of the original comics and cartoons, but more recent trailers had left a general sense of impending DOOM, with all the slapstick humour in them... and we all know nostalgia is almost never good to go back and revisit. Plus, you know, we've all seen what Michael Bay did to the Transformers movie franchise :/

So, it's with great surprise that we all thoroughly enjoyed it. The cringeworthy humour from the later trailers is present in the film, but somehow they managed to condense all the really cringeworthy bits into one trailer, so when you have it in context and spread out over the course of the entire film it's actually ok. It is also worth noting that what I'd missed in the advertising was that Bay isn't the director on the film, just one of the producers, which could also go a long way to explaining a few things too. You've still got the annoying Bay style fast moving  action scenes that blur everything out, but the rest of the film hangs together well.

It is primarily a kids summer flick, so it's never going to win any awards for plot, writing or acting.. but it is fun and, from what I remember of the series, has fulfilled my nostalgia kick without having it trampled all over. I'd call that a success, especially as they left out a lot of the rather dodgy elements of the cartoons like Krang, Bebop and Rocksteady. No doubt they are saving those for the inevitable sequel that it doesn't need.

The main thing that I was interested to see was how they updated the designs as I'm sure we all remember the first attempt at a turtles movie series and the costumes *shudder*

Yeah... not good when you look back on them now (or at the time come to think of it). So when the new designs appear on screen...

Much better! Each character has their own design that goes beyond what colour bandana they wear and what weapon they use. The small touches like Raphael's shell being taped up to Mikey's surfer style necklace really build up their characters.