I sort of feel like if you can check your brain for “Guardians of the Galaxy,” you can check your brain for “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.” These things are both basically children's movies. Yeah, Marvel's big end-of-summer king got a lot of great reviews, but it also instantly shot to the top of the most-overrated-film-of-the-year-by-a-staggering-margin list. And I liked it just fine! We're just in this weird space of polar reactions. The media either has to love something or hate it. I feel like these two movies are a perfect illustration of the inherent hypocrisy in that, but that's just my opinion.
So yeah, I really liked “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.” I grew up on the cartoon like a number of people but it wasn't a nostalgia bath or anything. I liked the personalities of these characters and the swiftness of the whole affair. I zoned out when it painfully tried to establish a new backstory, but then Michelangelo surfed an SUV down an avalanche and I was back on board. The film has certainly taken its knocks from the critics, but for some it seemed to land in that “not as terrible as I thought it would be” space at least. Anyway, I had a ton of fun with it; it's really not that bad. If you're on the fence, go, munch on some popcorn, slurp down some sugary calories and head on back here with your thoughts. I'd be curious to know if you needed some faux depth via mix tapes and a walkman to get through it all.