Critic Reviews

[A] basically brainless but intermittently adrenalizing, mostly-just-for-kids reboot.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is about as predictable as movies get these days.

What the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles lacks is not fidelity, but a spirit of genuine boyish fun.

Turtles is head-and-shell better than "Transformers." Cowabunga?

The castmembers portraying Splinter and the turtles achieve a persuasive level of realism that was never possible with the elaborate puppetry required for the original film series and adequately fulfill expectations for their characters.

The action beats are bigger and better than they’ve ever been in a Ninja Turtle film — brawls, shootouts, a snowy car-and-truck chase with big explosions and what not. But in between those scenes is an awful lot of chatter and exposition. For a film that aims younger (save for the die-hards who grew up with this franchise), that’s deadly dull.

While this reboot is fun, it’s also forgettable and occasionally infuriating.

A dark, shaky, standard-issue superhero picture.

A consistently workmanlike helmer, Liebesman (Wrath of the Titans, Battle: Los Angeles) keeps the pace brisk and the overall tone closer to that of the recent G.I. Joe vehicles, infusing this glorified toy commercial with an almost aggressively knowing sense of humor and exactly one fun action sequence on New York’s most conveniently located mountaintop.

It can't be overstated what kind of a marvel these Turtles are onscreen, however. As crude and unpleasant their design might be, they feel like living, breathing things, not special effects.