Review of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows (2016) by Brett H — 21 Jan 2017

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows is the follow-up to the critically panned and largely forgettable predecessor, and is proof-positive that making a live-action cartoon which completely caters to the fan-base, does not guarantee a quality film.

I would hesitate to call myself a ninja turtles fan (my experience involves mainly just playing some of the games and loving the original movie from the 90's), but this is a lackluster, shoddily scripted, and painfully unfunny, summer blockbuster that should've worked and just DIDN'T.

Everything fans have wanted for YEARS was put into this film including: Krang and the Technodrome, Casey Jones, Bebop and Rocksteady, Baxter Stockman, and all the returning characters from the previous film; yet it all amounts to nothing more than a jumbled mess and a complete waste of the source material.

The story follows the four turtles: Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello, and Raphael, who must deal with new enemies surfacing in New York as well as their own trepidations of protecting a city that doesn't know they exist.

The returning cast all do fine here; thankfully the filmmakers cut down on Will Arnett and Megan Fox's screen-time, but the new additions fail to impress. Stephen Amell is straight-up AWFUL as a whiny, rookie-cop version of Casey Jones, Brad Garrett's voice doesn't suit Krang one bit, Laura Linney looks lost, Stephen Farrelly and Gary Anthony Williams do okay as Bebop and Rocksteady, and the re-casting of Brian Tee as Shredder is completely wasted.

Krang's appearances in this film are completely unexplained, and he literally just snatches Shredder out of the air during a prison escape and quite easily convinces him to aid in his world domination plans.

.. Basically, if you're a hardcore turtles fan, this movie will work for you, but from a film-making point-of-view, it is lacking in almost every way. It's marginally more entertaining than the last film, but that's not really saying much considering the potential this one had.