Review: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014)
It takes almost toxic levels of suspension of disbelief to make it through the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reboot, the fifth and worst entry in the film franchise based on the pop culture phenomenon originally created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. That suspension of disbelief has nothing to do with mutant turtles in the sewers who learned kung fu from a mutant rat to fight a villain wearing a suit of knives. No, the TMNT are as ingrained in our imagination as any other 20th century commercial institution at this point, and if we're seeing the film at all, they've already got us in the theater—we've bought the premise like we've bought our ticket. Rather, this new TMNT suffers from the other, worse kind of suspension of disbelief: Filmgoers are asked to turn off their brain, ignore all logic and just accept the fact that every action taken by every character makes no sense at all.