Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the shadows movie review Hero’s in a crap shell

Director: Dave Green
Cast: Megan Fox,  Stephen Amell,  Alan Ritchson,  Will Arnett, Alessandro Ambrosio,  Laura Linney,  Noel Fisher,  Brian Tee,  Fred Armisen (voice of Kraang),  Tony Shaloub (voice of Splinter),  Tyler Perry,  Stephen Farrelly,  Judith Hoag,  Pete Ploszek,  Gary Anthony Williams,  Jeremy Howard,  Danny Woodburn
Rating: 12A
Running time: 111 mins
Release date: 30/05/2016 As I write this review I fully understand that my opinions on this film may generate a fair amount of vitriol from the hard-core fans, so I’ll lead with this. I really, really wanted to like this movie.

I won’t lie 2014’s Turtles reboot caught me a little by surprise, I went into that film like a lot of you expecting a complete car crash of a movie and whether it was because my expectations where so low or I just wasn’t paying attention I ended up being pleasantly surprised. No it isn’t a good film by any stretch of the imagination but for me on a personal level it got quite a few things right and sat as a happy medium between the campiness of the 1987 animated series and the darker more brooding 1990 live action film. I saw this as a fairly competent way to reboot the franchise for today’s youngsters.

Fast forward to 2016,  after watching two seasons of the seriously underrated 2012 TMNT animated series I felt my love for the Turtles slowly being reinvigorated, so I stepped into the cinema with excitement and the tiniest glimmer of hope. Twenty minutes in and all hope was shredded.

I won’t bother writing about the plot as its readily available everywhere at this point and I don’t want to waste words describing it, but what I will say is this, it is a huge mess. Yes it’s a kid’s movie but that shouldn’t excuse a bad story. In comparison just have a look at Disney’s The Jungle Book that came out just a few months ago, a tightly plotted action packed film aimed roughly at the same demographic. I understand the Turtles are a completely different entity but my point is that the story in TJB is what drove the action and not just a series of flashy set pieces that have a few lines of dialog dotted between them.
 
So let’s talk about what they did get right. As a whole the characterisation of the four Turtles is pretty spot on. Leonardo is stoic and straight laced, Raphael is brooding and quick tempered although he does get a few more jokes this time round.  Donatello is his usual gadget obsessed nerdy self, and Michelangelo is well… Michelangelo: although that said some of his jokes skim a little too close to the creepy side for my liking. All in all the interactions between the four brothers is pretty good and they definitely have more time to develop in this film.

Let’s move on to the other positive aspect of this sequel. The cgi work on both the set pieces and the characters themselves have been vastly improved since the 2014 iteration, with the stand outs being Bebop and Rocksteady who look as close to their animated counterparts as you could possibly wish for. On a side note I am still not a fan of the overall look of the Turtles and think that they just look to bulked up and aggressive.

Okay so onto the negatives, in a nutshell everything else. Let’s begin with the villains of the piece. Firstly there’s Brian Tee’s Shredder who thankfully no longer looks like Shredatron Prime but is reduced to nothing more than a trinket collector who is unceremoniously frozen and locked away before the grand finale, no doubt to be used at a later date for an inevitable third instalment. Then there’s the real ‘big bad’, Kraang who only appears a handful of times before taking on the role of end stage boss in a climactic battle that is to all intents and purposes a carbon copy of the battle in the original 2014 film. I’m afraid that’s all I can really say about the villains as they weren’t given much else to do. It’s not like I was expecting performances approaching that of Heath Ledger’s joker here but I was hoping for just the slightest bit of characterisation.

Another of the new additions to the cast this time around is that of fan favourite Casey Jones played on this occasion by Arrow’s Stephen Amell who on paper was in ideal fit for the wise cracking vigilante. Unfortunately for Mr Amell the sarcastic anti-hero who’s fiery relationship with the Turtles could have been the source of some real great humour has been replaced by the most generic and bland cookie cutter characterisation and if that wasn’t bad enough his motivations for his joining the Turtles on their adventure is at the very least spurious.

Returning for this instalment are Will Arnett and Megan Fox as Vernon Fenwick and April O’Neil respectively. After wracking my brain for hours the only positive I could take away from their performances is the fact that their screen time has been greatly reduced and that at the very least Megan Fox can give the bored dad’s out there something tangible to look at.

Tony Shaloub’s Splinter still does nothing for me and is now only used sporadically to spout out random lines of fortune cookie philosophy, which surprisingly I’m alright with. Oh and let’s not forget about Tyler Perry’s Baxter Stockman who’s hammy portrayal of the mad scientist should be buried in the deepest darkest hole possible and finally there’s poor Laura Linney, who lets face the truth is only involved with this film because she probably has a large mortgage payment to make, but I can’t blame her for that, I would do the same.

Moving swiftly on to the action set pieces, which are by now no more than the usual BAYHEM we’ve become accustomed to from Platinum Dunes which will vanish from your memory before you even leave the theatre. As mediocre as the first film was at least it had one memorable action sequence, you know the one, the chase in the snow, but the same can’t be said for the sequel.

I would discuss the score but to be honest I don’t actually remember it at all, which stands as testament to how forgettable it is. On paper we are told that Dave Green is the director of this instalment but who are we kidding just sit down and watch the movie for five minutes and you’ll see the invisible hands of his royal Bayness pulling at the strings and making Mr Green nothing more than a second unit director. It is a shame though because there are the briefest of glimpses that the film almost becomes more than the sum of its parts. One such moment involves a thread that follows the four brothers as they struggle with the idea that a vile of mutagen they have appropriated holds the possibility to turn the mutant hero’s human, If given the time I am sure Green could have used this device to give the film a real emotional core but alas as quickly as it is picked up this particular thread is quite literally thrown out to get us to the next Baytacular moment.

So what’s my verdict, TMNT OOTS still isn’t quite as awful as it could have been but it’s nowhere near good either. It could so easily have built on the foundations of its predecessor and given us a story that incorporated themes about family and what it means to be an outsider but instead like many other films that have had the darkness of Michael bays touch on them what we actually got was an infantile pile of crap that is so by the numbers and generic that you’ll most probably forget about it before you even finish watching it and maybe we should be thankful for that.
 
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