Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows - directed by Dave Green
Screenplay: Josh Appelbaum & Andre Nemec
Music Score by: Steve Jablonsky
I felt a sense of deja vu heading into the screening of this movie tonight.
Like the last movie that I saw - "Alice Through the Looking Glass" - I was not a huge fan of the movie that preceded it but was looking forward to the latest instalment for reasons that escape me.
In fairness to the 2014 Turtle movie I enjoyed it a lot more than I did Tim Burton's "Alice In Wonderland"- without actually loving it - I just thought it was better than it could have been.
There was a lot that worked - more than didn't - and it was a decent amount of fun.
A lot of people seemed to agree and it became a minor hit.
Of course there would be a sequel and two years after the first movie reeled in almost $500,000,000 on a $125,000,000 production budget here it is complete with a very cumbersome title.
This time the central idea is that the turtles are tired of constantly having to hide from the public that they risk their lives to save night after night.
Vernon (Will Arnett) has embraced the deal the Turtles struck with him to take all the credit for defeating Shredder in the first film and is acting like the big man around town complete with Supermodel companion (Brazilian beauty Allesandra Ambrosio) and the key to the city.
Meanwhile Shredder is broken out of custody and the man in charge of the 'failed' operation to movie him takes it upon himself to make amends.
And thus Casey Jones (Stephen Amell) is introduced complete with hockey mask and stick.
The sequence in which we meet him first as a cop is pretty good.
It has shades of the "Dark Knight" with the brilliant sequence where the Joker attempts to disrupt Harvey Dent's transportation...... without being anywhere near as good of course.
But it is fun and well enough constructed.
Likewise the opening scene in which April O'Neill hacks the e-mail of scientist Baxter Stockman (Tyler Perry) is a fair amount of fun.
The direction and editing is fine and the special effects are actually very, very good.
The Turtle animation is excellent for example and the foursome exist as expressive, 'real' characters.
Splinter the rat is even better but sadly has very little screen time.
Shredder also has very little time on screen and the reason appears to be that more is set aside for Megan Fox's April and newbies Casey Jones and the two new villains Bebop and Rocksteady the mutant rhino and warthog.
It's all well and good sidelining two of the franchises major characters like this if it is in the service of the story but unfortunately there isn't a very good one here.
This may sound very, very familiar to fans of The Avengers, Pixels, Transformers and numerous other flicks of the last decade but this movie features a portal opening up over New York through which alien spacecraft appear.
I almost said "Oh for shits sake!" out loud when this happened.
As if we need to see that old chestnut yet again.
The only saving grace is that the huge swarm of alien craft are actually assembling into one big old Death Star looking thing and it is pretty cool.
But then the story comes along again and ruins everything.
Kraang is introduced as the real villain with Shredder discarded casually and easily when it suits the plot.
Tyler Perry's annoying Baxter Stockman is utilised in a similar fashion.
That leaves the Turtles to fight a big bad guy and April, Casey and Vernon are charged with taking out Bebop and Rocksteady in order to deactivate a beacon.
It is cliched beyond belief.
The reason for the first movies success was a slavish desire to appeal to young kids and this movie is no exception.
My bitching about weak plotting will therefore no doubt not matter one jot to the majority of the people who want to see this.
Whether the action and humour is enough to satisfy them will be interesting to see.
In truth the action is better than the first movie with a pretty exciting aeroplane sequence that brings to mind "Furious 7".
(Amazingly even with the introduction of giant talking turtles it is possibly more believable)
This sequence leads to the river scene shown in the trailers and it too is nicely done.
The hit miss ratio on the jokes is about 50/50 although there are two that caused my audience to laugh very loudly.
Megan Fox is there to look good and you can tick that box too.
She has the already famous schoolgirl midriff scene that the trailers utilised heavily but for the rest of the film she runs around in a tank top and tight jeans looking very, very good indeed.
She needs to stop messing with her face though- she already looks like a mannequin up close with the surgery and heavy makeup glaringly obvious.
She's a beautiful young woman and someone needs to tell her to stop defacing nature's work!
Fox does a good job generally though and even some truly awful lines work well enough thanks to her efforts.
Will Arnett is the real comedy presence of course and he is also very good but needs a lot better material to come close to exploiting his special brand of blowhard humour.
Fans of the great tv show Arrested Development will know what I mean.
Wasting good actors is a common problem with this movie.
Laura Linney is far better than the material given her.
The script cannot decide whether she is an efficient, tough cop or a wide eyed rookie a lot of the time.
Linney does what she can with her lines offer her but this pretty much counts as slumming it for someone of her calibre.
There is some very good talent behind the voice acting too but again- Tony Shalhoub and Brad Garrett get very little that comes close to exploiting their skill.
I wasn't bored with this movie.
The idea that the Turtles want to come out into the open was clumsily handled and a lot of the plot makes no sense whatsoever (Is Shredder really this dumb?)
It stays just on the right side of frustrating though.... just.
Every time I felt a little restless or shook my head at a moronic plot turn something came along to take my mind off it.
There is enough fun here to make up for most of the bad choices.
Casey Jones is fine, Rocksteady and Bebop are reasonably good and there is a lot of action in a relatively restrained running time.
This is likely to satisfy younger viewers without boring the crap out of whichever relative escorts them to the cinema.
For anyone else it is hard to recommend unless you are a fan of the first movie.
The action is better, the plot weaker.
Fox looks good - the laughs are less frequent.
On balance it adds up to this being about as good as the first film.
So it's okay then.
RATING: 68 / 100
CONCLUSION: A reasonable sequel that suffers from a weak plot but lays on enough action, laughs and Megan Fox hotness to satisfy whatever it is you are looking for.
Starring: Megan Fox, Will Arnett, Tyler Perry, Laura Linney, Stephen Amell, Noel Fisher, Tony Shalhoub, Pete Ploszek, Stephen Farrelly, Jeremy Howard, Brian Tee, Brad Garrett, Alessandra Ambrosio, Gary Anthony Williams, Danny Woodburn, Myles Humphus, Brittany Ishibashi
Screenplay: Josh Appelbaum & Andre Nemec
Music Score by: Steve Jablonsky
Cinematography: Lula Carvalho
Edited by: Bob Ducsay & Jim May
Running Time: 112 minutes
Rated: PG - Comic book action violence and very mild profanity
Edited by: Bob Ducsay & Jim May
Running Time: 112 minutes
Rated: PG - Comic book action violence and very mild profanity
Like the last movie that I saw - "Alice Through the Looking Glass" - I was not a huge fan of the movie that preceded it but was looking forward to the latest instalment for reasons that escape me.
In fairness to the 2014 Turtle movie I enjoyed it a lot more than I did Tim Burton's "Alice In Wonderland"- without actually loving it - I just thought it was better than it could have been.
There was a lot that worked - more than didn't - and it was a decent amount of fun.
A lot of people seemed to agree and it became a minor hit.
Of course there would be a sequel and two years after the first movie reeled in almost $500,000,000 on a $125,000,000 production budget here it is complete with a very cumbersome title.
This time the central idea is that the turtles are tired of constantly having to hide from the public that they risk their lives to save night after night.
Vernon (Will Arnett) has embraced the deal the Turtles struck with him to take all the credit for defeating Shredder in the first film and is acting like the big man around town complete with Supermodel companion (Brazilian beauty Allesandra Ambrosio) and the key to the city.
Meanwhile Shredder is broken out of custody and the man in charge of the 'failed' operation to movie him takes it upon himself to make amends.
And thus Casey Jones (Stephen Amell) is introduced complete with hockey mask and stick.
The sequence in which we meet him first as a cop is pretty good.
It has shades of the "Dark Knight" with the brilliant sequence where the Joker attempts to disrupt Harvey Dent's transportation...... without being anywhere near as good of course.
But it is fun and well enough constructed.
Likewise the opening scene in which April O'Neill hacks the e-mail of scientist Baxter Stockman (Tyler Perry) is a fair amount of fun.
The direction and editing is fine and the special effects are actually very, very good.
The Turtle animation is excellent for example and the foursome exist as expressive, 'real' characters.
Splinter the rat is even better but sadly has very little screen time.
Shredder also has very little time on screen and the reason appears to be that more is set aside for Megan Fox's April and newbies Casey Jones and the two new villains Bebop and Rocksteady the mutant rhino and warthog.
 |
| Megan Fox returns as April O'Neill as does her considerable sex appeal |
This may sound very, very familiar to fans of The Avengers, Pixels, Transformers and numerous other flicks of the last decade but this movie features a portal opening up over New York through which alien spacecraft appear.
I almost said "Oh for shits sake!" out loud when this happened.
As if we need to see that old chestnut yet again.
The only saving grace is that the huge swarm of alien craft are actually assembling into one big old Death Star looking thing and it is pretty cool.
But then the story comes along again and ruins everything.
Kraang is introduced as the real villain with Shredder discarded casually and easily when it suits the plot.
Tyler Perry's annoying Baxter Stockman is utilised in a similar fashion.
That leaves the Turtles to fight a big bad guy and April, Casey and Vernon are charged with taking out Bebop and Rocksteady in order to deactivate a beacon.
It is cliched beyond belief.
 |
| Turtle action is what puts the bums on seats and fans are well served in this sequel |
My bitching about weak plotting will therefore no doubt not matter one jot to the majority of the people who want to see this.
Whether the action and humour is enough to satisfy them will be interesting to see.
In truth the action is better than the first movie with a pretty exciting aeroplane sequence that brings to mind "Furious 7".
(Amazingly even with the introduction of giant talking turtles it is possibly more believable)
This sequence leads to the river scene shown in the trailers and it too is nicely done.
The hit miss ratio on the jokes is about 50/50 although there are two that caused my audience to laugh very loudly.
Megan Fox is there to look good and you can tick that box too.
She has the already famous schoolgirl midriff scene that the trailers utilised heavily but for the rest of the film she runs around in a tank top and tight jeans looking very, very good indeed.
She needs to stop messing with her face though- she already looks like a mannequin up close with the surgery and heavy makeup glaringly obvious.
She's a beautiful young woman and someone needs to tell her to stop defacing nature's work!
Fox does a good job generally though and even some truly awful lines work well enough thanks to her efforts.
Will Arnett is the real comedy presence of course and he is also very good but needs a lot better material to come close to exploiting his special brand of blowhard humour.
Fans of the great tv show Arrested Development will know what I mean.
 |
| The supporting cast is good within the constraints of a pretty weak script |
Laura Linney is far better than the material given her.
The script cannot decide whether she is an efficient, tough cop or a wide eyed rookie a lot of the time.
Linney does what she can with her lines offer her but this pretty much counts as slumming it for someone of her calibre.
There is some very good talent behind the voice acting too but again- Tony Shalhoub and Brad Garrett get very little that comes close to exploiting their skill.
I wasn't bored with this movie.
The idea that the Turtles want to come out into the open was clumsily handled and a lot of the plot makes no sense whatsoever (Is Shredder really this dumb?)
It stays just on the right side of frustrating though.... just.
Every time I felt a little restless or shook my head at a moronic plot turn something came along to take my mind off it.
There is enough fun here to make up for most of the bad choices.
Casey Jones is fine, Rocksteady and Bebop are reasonably good and there is a lot of action in a relatively restrained running time.
This is likely to satisfy younger viewers without boring the crap out of whichever relative escorts them to the cinema.
For anyone else it is hard to recommend unless you are a fan of the first movie.
The action is better, the plot weaker.
Fox looks good - the laughs are less frequent.
On balance it adds up to this being about as good as the first film.
So it's okay then.
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