2014’s reboot of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was one of the worst movies of the year, but it had a good fanbase for anyone who is a Ninja Turtles fan. No excitement was going through my mind when the sequel is coming in the middle of summer with a new director, Dave Green (Earth of Echo) and it’s still produced by Michael Bay. The trailers made it worse than what it appeared to be, but what does it result to?
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows tried to be a little bit better than the original but just ended up another useless sequel. The turtles are the center of the movie, which is a good thing because the first movie focused way too much of April O’Neil (Megan Fox). The heroes in a half shell had more to do and worked well as a team, but Mikey is a bit more stupid than before. I do want to point out a dumb moment where they had to introduced the audience who they are. Are we so clueless that we can’t remember who they are and need their traits?
Fox won a Razzie for her dim performance as April O’Neil, and once again she can’t act and just there to look hot on screen. If you were pumped to see Stephen Amell as the rad vigilante, Casey Jones, sorry to disappoint because he wasn’t good. Casey Jones is one of my favorite characters from the show and from the first movie, and he’s completely ruined. He was pretty much Oliver Queen/Arrow but wearing a hockey mask in one scene. What’s worst is that he’s a whiner for the first half.
If we’re going through the villains: Shredder was completely useless throughout and it doesn’t pay off in the end. Tyler Perry as Baxter Stockman was a cartoon character and an over the top nerd scientist, Krang was terrible, and Bebop and Rocksteady were dumb with horrible CGI included. And Laura Linney’s in this. That’s nice.
But Steve Jablonsky’s score was on point and far better than Brian Tyler’s. The plot is totally uninteresting as it couldn’t find one cohesive storyline to follow with also throwing exposition that makes no sense. It’s time like this that I wish movies would stop spoon feeding information to us. The action sequences at times were fun while impossible or should’ve died in many of them, some dumb humor is thrown in there, and the references to other Ninja Turtles properties aren’t enough for this to be fully entertaining.
TMNT: Out of the Shadows wasn’t a real improvement on the predecessor. The turtles themselves were still the best part of it all while everything else didn’t work for anything.
Grade: C-
DC's Take 