Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows

Year: 2016
Genre: Superhero Movie
Directed: Dave Green
Stars: Megan Fox, Will Arnett, Laura Linney, Stephen Amell, Noel Fisher, Jeremy Howard, Pete Ploszek, Alan Ritchson, Tyler Perry, Brian Tee, Stephen Farrelly, Gary Anthony Williams, Tony Shalhoub, Brad Garrett
Production: Paramount Pictures

There's a moment in this film where franchise newcomer Casey Jones (Amell) turns to Will Arnett and says "If I were you, I'd just go with it." That seems to be the message behind the new TMNT film which once again pits the crime-fighting, pizza loving turtles against perennial villain Shredder (Tee). Only this time, to increase hollow inter-textualization and maximize toy sales, Paramount Pictures have brought out the big guns. You asked for it so for the sake of your children, please buy the TMNT Tactical Truck Vehicle. Or how about a few action figures modeled after Foot Clan errand boys Bebop and Rocksteady. Lest we forget there's Krang, TMNT's other villain which as you guessed it, makes an appearance. Come on people, we got to sell these toys and now is better than later!

TMNT truck now sold with nun-chuck action!

The film begins shortly after the last one mercifully ended. The four turtle brothers; Leonardo (Ploszek), Raphael (Ritchson), Donatello (Howard) and Michelangelo (Fisher) still live in hiding, allowing friend and Will Arnett impersonator Vernon take the credit for their heroics. They still communicate with April O'Neil (Fox) who is investigating a possible Foot Clan connection to noted particle physicist Baxter Stockman (Perry). The plot then thickens and for the sake of brevity I'm going to surmise it thusly: Shredder, truck, teleporter, hockey mask, Krang, ooze, Rocksteady, Bebop, sibling squabbles, pizza, Brazil, tank, police, waterfall, more family squabbling, monsters ahh!, inter-dimensional invasion, monsters yay!, keys to the city, credits.

Weee turtles!!!!

Visually, Out of the Shadows is pretty much the same as the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014). Gigantic CGI reptiles and mammals swoop and somersault unnaturally amid a jumble of set-pieces set to frappe. While each turtle has been given simple, straight-forward personalities and their own customized arsenals, none of the action scenes take advantage of any of that. Instead we get the same old, same old meant to resemble jumping through a water slide while a laser show is on but feeling more like we're being spun around by our legs.

As far as story goes, Out of the Shadows is the equivalent of watching a high school student bluff through a research presentation. It's unnaturally fast, immediately embarrassing, and lets nothing dangle in the air lest people start to actually think about what it's doing and where it's going. Then again, any movie that has Tyler Perry playing a brilliant scientist is going for the lowest of low hanging fruit. The film hopes to distract its audience from it's clunky story (and its Tyler Perry) with the turtles cracking-wise while nearly every other side character pulls double duty as exposition heavers and the butt of someone's joke. Stephen Amell gets off the worst of them all, playing a character who spills out his motivations like the home page of a Facebook profile.

Then of course there's Megan Fox whose performance may have improved? I'm not quite sure since, unlike the first film, she's not forced to exchange dialogue with actual talents like Whoopi Goldberg and William Fichtner. For most of the film she's either talking to one of the turtles via watch-phone or pushed to the side corner reacting to things. Then of course there's the one scene featured in the trailer where Fox does a quick change in Grand Central Station from reporter to a slinky, sexy school girl complete with a Britney Spears "Oops I Did It Again" center blouse knot. Ironically that flagrant attempt at PG-13 T&A was the only time the writers took suggestions from the marketing department and made them look organic.

Look, I get it; it's TMNT. Audiences come in expecting a certain level of inanity. The source material is a bizarre pastiche of superhero cliches and plots, given a certain absurdest spin for the sake of parody. Yet even if you go in with expectations clemently low, there's no denying Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows is a mess. Those curious to see a few fan favorites spring up and take up the battle armor beware. If you're really that anxious, why don't you just buy the action figures and create your own adventure featuring your favorite heroes on the half-shell. You can probably do better than this dreck.

Final Grade: F