‘Ninja Turtles’: Not this franchise’s best effort
The new “Turtles” is a step backward from the passable first installment, taking the overblown mess of that film’s final 30 minutes and stretching it out into the entire 112-minute sequel.
The movie begins with the return of investigative journalist April O’Neil (Megan Fox), reporting a story, as we all do, by wearing a series of trashy outfits, coming on to sources without identifying her employment, shoplifting and then stealing data from a phone.
Too often “Out of the Shadows” is like watching your kids play a video game — and not when they’re fighting or doing anything cool.
New characters include young cop Casey Jones (Stephen Amell), whose superpower is hockey, a goof that should have been played for humor but isn’t.
The half-warthog and half-rhinoceros bad guys Bebop and Rocksteady, from the animated show that followed the comics, add little menace or comedy.
Laura Linney, a three-time Academy Award nominee, who should have won in 2001 for “You Can Count On Me,” is a bright light in a secondary role as a police chief.
Megan Fox getting top billing over Linney, as much as anything the current presidential candidates have done, should scare all of us about the direction this country is headed.
The best action set piece involves their new garbage truck crime-fighting vehicle, which resembles an updated version of the heavily armed recreation vehicle in “Stripes.”
By the end of the film, though, the fun of that sequence is long gone, replaced by a flying Tetris board coming out of the same female-genitalia-shaped reverse black hole that always appears over Manhattan in action movies.
[...] that day, we’re stuck with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: