Checked out the sequel to the 2014 remake of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise (“Out of the Shadows”). This is the live action reboot of the franchise with ugly, hulking version of the turtles. I didn’t care much for that previous movie and I’m reasonably happy to say this is a better movie than that. It’s not a great or even particularly good movie but it has enjoyable moments and a few fairly exciting action scenes and that’s why anyone would see a movie about mutant superhero turtle, I guess.
This sequel adds in characters from the original cartoons and has a tone that feels more line with the target audience of the franchise. The previous movie almost seemed embarrassed by itself – this one gives us Bebop and Rocksteady (the warthog and rhino mutants), Krang (the talking interdenominational brain), and Casey Jones (the hockey mask wearing vigilante) on top of the mutant turtles (and rat). It seems to be admitting that, hey, maybe this is what people wanted after all.
Not that all of this is successful. Characters like Casey Jones and April O’Neil don’t have enough to do and the villain Shredder is, once again, kind of boring and side-lined. And Krang… well… I guess he’s a villain and he’s certainly the driving motivation for the final act, but he (it?) seems kind of stuffed into the movie randomly. And that final act is just a riot gun full of nonsensical overdone CGI snoozefest action mess (just like the previous movie).
I’m not going to go into nonsensical plots points and convenient exposition dumps – that would be pointless given this movie doesn’t really take itself seriously enough to worry about plot holes. Fine. Its there if you want to nitpick though. I just rolled with it – not like this is based on a tv show built on a solid foundation of well-scripted, logical stories.
There is more characterization done with the heroes this time and that’s fine… though the movie once again has to go the tired old well of the brothers disagreeing and arguing with each other. Aren’t we over this tired cliche yet in this series? OK, maybe the movie is aimed at kids and kids might actually be worried they will break up… but pretty sure kids are smarter than that. To grumpy old me, it was just another tiresome retread of a tiresome cliche.
But, like I mentioned earlier, there are still some pretty good action set pieces in fist two acts of the film. A sequence about a crashing airplane is particularly good (as long as you don’t bring a wet blanket of logic to it).
So, yeah, this isn’t an entirely successful film but there’s something to be said for not being another gritty reboot. The movie seems to know what it is and has fun with its cartoon (not comic book) roots. It doesn’t work more than it works and I’m not offering much of a recommendation but if you are curious or are being dragged to it by tiny humans, I’ve seen worse movies.
Score: 72