It’s the return of the roided-up green cancer patients who wear bandanas and a bunch of other random accessories because the marketing department said this would make them more down with the kids of today. Yes it’s the sequel to the film that I’m surprised was able to garner enough interest and box office takings to warrant a sequel. The film is filled with talking warthogs, talking brains and a recast Shredder whilst Megan Fox reads screen directions just to the side of camera. The film itself is really really dumb, but what’s more insulting, is the fact that the filmmakers think that you the audience are even dumber.
When the Turtles arch nemesis Shredder escapes from jail we find ourselves kind of searching for Maguffins, kind of dealing with the Turtles trying to find their place in the world, kind of introducing a bunch of fan-favourite characters, kind of looking at our watch every few minutes. The plot is often side-lined for interactions between the Turtles or new character’s Bebop and Rocksteady that can be funny, but also can start to become a little annoying after a while.
We have Megan Fox back again but this time acting in a slightly darker yellow jacket, and she gives the kind of performance you’d expect from Megan Fox, in a slightly darker yellow jacket. Her performance is somewhere between bored and reading her lines for the first time before the director yells “action”. This time she is joined by Arrow’s Stephen Amell who is playing the hockey stick wielding Casey Jones in name only. It seems throughout the film these two are competing for who can talk out loud about what they are doing even when no one else is around to hear them.
The film does have some inventive action sequences which includes an airplane/tank sequence that looks great but is short-lived and easily the highlight of the film, which is kind of a pity considering this happens before the third act. The big problem is that a lot of these bombastic sequences are thinly threaded together with plot points that the filmmakers take no time to flesh out. Things are brought up and then forgotten about, the Turtles are angry with one another and then they move on in hopes that the audience don’t notice, and then the conflict between the Turtles build to breaking point and then seem to be resolved off camera.
On top of the weak storyline, the film is littered with shameless references to Transformers along with other Michael Bay movies. There are references to minor American celebrities that will only make sense if you’re an American, plus the fan-servicing simply becomes nothing more than a box-ticking exercise that doesn’t really provide any genuine pay-offs. We have Casey Jones wearing his hockey mask, for about three seconds; we have the newly recast Shredder, played by Brian Tee wearing his iconic mask, for about the same amount of time; and we have Krang, voiced by Everybody Loves Raymond’s Brad Garrett who feels wedged into the film as clumsily as a Hodor doorstop, especially when he appears randomly early in the film simply to explain that he will be returning for the third act. The film is trying to give you everything you wanted, but in the same breath, makes you realise you should never have asked for it in the first place.
Overall, the film isn’t as smart as it think it is and doesn’t really think that you are that smart either. With giant blinking neon signs providing script directions for the audience that may as well have been originally scripted phonetically in crayons complete with IKEA-level instructions and diagrams, the film will only appeal to really hardcore fans and really young children. Bebop and Rocksteady may bring the occasional smile, but probably a smile that can wait until tight-ass Tuesday or at least the bargain bin of your local shopping centre.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Out Of The Shadows gets One and three Quarter hours ripped from your very soul….
No comments:
Post a Comment