By Matthew Demchak

Normally, I’m not a fan of Nickelodeon movies. They usually look very senseless, and dull. However, this opinion is not the same for the cinematic movie of favorite Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

4 turtles—named Leonardo (Pete Plosek, voiced by Johnny Knoxville), Raphael (Alan Ritchson), Donatello (Jeremy Howard), and Michelangelo (Noel Fisher)—have been mutated by a mutagen, and are now human size. Thanks to training from their master, a mutant rat named Splinter, they are now ninjas.

Their enemy is the evil Foot Clan, who is basically taking over New York City. Though they are told by Splinter not to leave the sewers that they now live in, the turtles still go up to battle the Foot Clan and their leader, Shredder.

The cast of the movie is led by Megan Fox as April O’Neil, a reporter who saved the turtles back before they were fully mutated. In the lab that they were bred in, a fire broke out, and April saved them and Splinter by sending them into the sewers of New York.

3 more major cast members are Will Arnett as Vernon Fenwick, April’s cameraman, William Fichtner as Eric Sacks, a greedy businessman who is being paid by Shredder to catch the turtles for his evil scheme, and Tohoru Masamune as Shredder, the turtles’ arch nemesis.

The story takes place in New York City, where the Foot Clan attacks repetitively. It’s only thanks to the turtles that the Foot Clan is being stopped. To try to trap them, the Foot Clan takes hostages in a subway, including April, thinking that the turtles would just surrender rather than chance the harm of the hostages. However, the turtles win yet again.

This makes Shredder mad, prompting him to use Eric Sacks to give April a tracking device used to lure the Foot Clan to the sewers. This plan succeeds, and all the turtles are captured except for Raphael. Splinter is also gravely injured by his fight with Shredder.

Raphael now must track down where the other turtles are being held. This leads him to the Sacks estate, where Shredder and Sacks are draining the blood out of the Turtles to use the mutagen in it as a cure for a deadly virus that they plan to release.

After a small (and painful, from Raphael’s point of view) battle with Shredder, the turtles are free. But now they must get back to NYC to stop Sacks and Shredder from releasing the virus with the help of April and her cameraman, Vernon.

I came into the theatre knowing little about the Ninja Turtles franchise. I was hoping for a good film, and not a mind-numbing, idiotic film that I would waste a perfectly good Saturday afternoon watching.

The result? Nothing short of a fantastic job for the film. Packed with humorous lines, an explosion here and there, and of course, epic blade duels. All along with good acting from the cast. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is definitely something that the die-hard fan will enjoy.

This movie is definitely a 8/10 film.