Review: NINJA TURTLES 2

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: OUT OF SHADOWS
(ACTION-COMEDY/SCI-FI) 
2 out of 4 stars 
Directed by Dave Green
Starring: Pete Ploszek, Alan Ritchson, Noel Fisher, Jeremy Howard, Megan Fox, Stephen Amell, Will Arnett, Brian Tee, Gary Anthony Williams, Sheamus, Laura Linney, Tyler Perry, Johnny Knoxville (voice), Tony Shalhoub (voice), Brad Garrett (voice)
Rated PG-13 for sci-fi action violence.
112 minutes
Verdict: Any recommendation of it should be heavily qualified, but as far as summer junk food movies go, it could have been worse.
YOU MAY BE INTERESTED IN TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: OUT OF THE SHADOWS IF YOU LIKED:
TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES  (2014)
THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2  (2014)
MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS  (1995)
GOOSEBUMPS  (2015)
EARTH TO ECHO  (2014)
Even if it's not much else, the lengthily-titled TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: OUT OF THE SHADOWS is a substantial improvement over its tedious 2014 predecessor.  Dave Green, whose directorial debut was the low-budget 2014 "found footage" family adventure EARTH TO ECHO, has taken over from the last movie's Jonathan Liebesman and has a far better sense of the material, even if that only gets it so far.  In a lot of ways, it's a throwback to '90s superhero movies, full of garish colors, hyperactive photography and over-the-top characterizations, and all the while you can't help but feel like you're actually watching a toy commercial.  It's also very weird without being very (or even moderately) original or inspired, colorful and full of flashing lights, loud and grotesque, and maybe just a little fun in a dumb, guilty summer movie kind of way.  It's a big-budget, mostly-cartoon, PG-13-rated kids movie produced by Michael Bay.
At the beginning of the story, set about a year after the first, sexy and intrepid reporter April O'Neil (Megan Fox) is on the trail of mad scientist Dr. Baxter Stockman (Tyler Perry), who she believes to be working with the notorious criminal who once tried to destroy New York, The Shredder (Brian Tee), in order to spring him from jail.  Worse than that, she discovers, Shredder and Stockman have come into possession of some alien ooze that they use to create mutants of their own, dimwitted henchmen Bebop (Gary Anthony Williams), transformed into a large, warthog-like creature, and Rocksteady (professional wrestler Sheamus, aka Stephen Farrelly), transformed into the likeness of a rhinoceros, in order to keep any interfering mutant turtles at bay as they enact their nefarious plans for world domination.  The turtles, led by Leonardo (motion capture performance by Pete Ploszek, voiced by Johnny Knoxville), with the brooding musclehead Raphael (Alan Ritchson), brainy Donatello (Jeremy Howard) and wisecracking (dumbcracking?) Michelangelo (Noel Fisher), in between their crime-fighting, yearn for recognition of their city-saving deeds while forced to keep their existence a secret, and come to terms with their varied roles as part of a team.

Like the previous movie, it's still pretty violent for being so much a kids movie, not that other Ninja Turtles movies weren't as well, but OUT OF THE SHADOWS is more colorful about it and less mean-spirited.  They seem to have a better handle on who the audience for these things really is.  Like a lot of blockbusters, and certainly in this case where the main characters are fully rendered in the computer, the action is often "video gamey", but Green's willingness to be foolish as opposed to Liebesman's weirdly generic style makes it a little more interesting than would be expected.  This brazen juvenility is largely beneficial to the movie as a whole in place of wit, which is virtually non-existent.  There are fart jokes, booger jokes, icks and oozes, and depending for your tolerance on that sort of thing, it's not as bad as it could be.
The Turtles, while getting substantially more screen time than before, are marginally less annoying this time around, although Mikey in particular is vastly less charming than the filmmakers seem to think he is, and none of them are terribly interesting.  New addition Casey Jones, a suspended cop who's fighting the Foot Clan on his own time with a hockey stick, is played by Stephen Amell (best known as title character of the CW's Arrow), who is reminiscent of Chris O'Donnell's Robin from the Joel Schumacher Batman films, which is not a good thing, but the way the Turtles pick on him is a source of genuine humor.  Megan Fox's talents as an actress aren't clear, since her most prominent role before this was Michael Bay's Transformers movies, in which she was depicted as embarrassingly little more than a sex object, and April O'Neill isn't substantially more rounded out, but she has a few moments that suggest she could do a lot more with a better role.  Other cast additions include Tyler Perry's Dr. Stockman, kind of like an expotentially dorkier Neil deGrasse Tyson with a bowtie and suspenders, who's interesting, and Laura Linney outclasses the material as ball-busting Police Chief Rebecca Vincent.
As summer movie junk food, it's not nearly as bad as it could have been, and it's an undoubted improvement on the last one, but any sort of recommendation with be tremendously qualified.  Then again, none of the Ninja Turtles movies have been objectively good, but they have their fans.

Images via Paramount