Crapshoot 2015: Action Time

Craptastic Action! One of these fails to live up to its hype, the other wildly exceeds it. 

For years, the world has awaited the arrival of the Michael Bay produced reboot of “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.”

From Bay’s free flying insults and backpedalling to fans of the property to the bizarre script treatments ranging from faithful interpretations to the titular heroes being interdimensional aliens, the only thing most of the world has really been looking forward to regarding “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” is just how much of a train wreck it seemed destined to be.

The wait has been over, the critical reception has be savaging and the profit needed to justify it as one more franchise needed  make Nickelodeon more ludicrous amounts of undeserved money has already rolled through.

What’s the verdict on this needless reboot in the age of needless reboots? How does it stack up to the cream of the 2014’s cinematic crap?

Meh.

That’s about it. Not good but not quite outstandingly bad in the slightest. Maybe I put too much stock into the word of fanboys of a property that was already a sellout to begin with, maybe my venom towards “Transformers 4” had me overly hyped but “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” coming from the perspective of someone that has grown up experiencing every incarnation of the property, is no worse than any other iteration of the story that seems to have long forgotten the satirical roots of its own stupidity.

The story of 4 mutated turtles named after renaissance artists and raised by a mutant rat to be ninjas has become a roughly 30 year institution of pop culture. Despite a few more contrivances linking their backstory with wannabe hard edged news reporter April O’Neil and more classic Michael Bay female exploitation courtesy of Megan Fox in tight blue jeans, it’s more of the same with better production value.

That’s not to say that the movie isn’t bad. The writing still remains laughably bad and its effort to connect the backstories of all of its central characters isn’t just forced but downright nonsensical.

Furthermore, to say that Megan Fox was miscast as April would be a severe understatement. If she really had to beg and plead Bay’s forgiveness just to give that performance, she should probably evaluate her career field.

This movie has about as much effort put into its screenplay as one would assume but the one thing that it has on its side for now that the previous movies didn’t is sharp direction.

While I hesitate to call Jonathan Liebesman a good director, the man does have an undoubtedly strong eye for action and adds cinematic flair to mundane character interactions. For the first time, the individual personality traits of the Turtles actually amount to something onscreen thanks to the solid work that went into the performances. The dialogue isn’t always up to snuff but at least the cast actually sells their characters and their brotherly relationship consistently, for better or worse (looking at you Michelangelo). Shockingly, the action is actually well choreographed and clearly shot. Nothing is exactly innovative but for the most part, it’s satisfyingly fast, furious and crisp.

And best of all, the film clocks in at little over an hour and a half. Right when my irritation levels were about to supersede my enjoyment of what did work, the movie cuts to credits, hanging around not a second longer than it absolutely needs to.

“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” is by no means a good movie; listen to any given stretch of dialogue or exposition and that is made clear right off the bat. However I find it hard to put how baffled I am at its hate. If I actually put any stock into the integrity of the Razzies, I’d be downright underwhelmed.

As any old action movie, its just mediocre. But in representing a franchise that has been long removed from its original thesis, I fail to see how this

Is any worse than this.

I especially fail to see how anyone (outside of an organization not required to actually watch the movies they’ll be demeriting) can single “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” out for the year's worst when absolute gold like this has come along.

Not to be confused with “Hercules,” starring Dwayne Johnson which came out last summer, “The Legend of Hercules” was Summit Films’ attempt to beat its competition to the market and what I can only assume will be the beginning of the end of fallen director Renny Harlin’s career.

“The Legend of Hercules” is a perfect storm of badness. Kellan Lutz headlines as the Greek demigod, who ends up on a journey to conquer the homeland that he was raised in. Growing up under the name Alcides, Hercules must contend with his stepfather’s wrath and his brother’s jealousy after spending years fighting as a gladiator in Egypt as a slave before discovering his heritage as the son of Zeus.

The scattershot plot synopsis above is more accurate than you might think and should be an indicator of what this movie has to offer as the lesser of the 2 Hercules films.

The ultimate compliment that I can offer “The Legend of Hercules” is that had I come across it on Fromage Fridays, it would have easily received a perfect score.

Calling Kellan Lutz wooden in this movie would be an underestimate of the worth of a useful resource; what little character existed in this bizarre interpretation of a Greek myth that utilizes none of the strengths of that myths iconography is sucked out by a performance that is somehow both stiff and inconsistent at the same time, leaving the “acting” of the movie to be carried by Scott Adkins, who comes across as Gerard Butler playing a “Dungeons & Dragons” villain, and Liam Garrigan, a wannabe Loki from “Thor” that feels more like an adult Prince Joffrey Baratheon.

In an almost “Twilight Zone-esque” example of countering quality filmmaking, the terrible performances make the blasé action even more hilarious.

This film wants o be “300” so badly that it would have been brushed off as a low quality knockoff 5 years ago but in an age where that film has been long out of date, it’s more than a little bit amusing.

Extreme speed-up/Slow-mo stabbings and slicing in non-graphic PG-13 with direct-to-video cinematography abound make this failure almost adorable in how much it thinks it’s stylish but really isn’t. I had to pause the movie to laugh for nearly a minute straight every time Hercules “calls upon the power of Zeus.” These scenes are so ungodly corny that as the lighting gathered around him, I half-expected Lutz to just start belting out “Thundercats Hoooooooo!”

“The Legend of Hercules” may very well have been the most thoroughly satisfying bad movie I’ve seen in some time had they not had the gall to release it into the theaters. The film may very well be a 3 out of 10 at best but on a Shatner scale…

4 Shatners out of 4