Movie Review: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows

I’ve never been a fan of “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.” I guess when I was growing up I

missed the memo that they were cool and I needed to hop on board and join the train. So back in

2014 when the newly rebooted “Turtles” movie was released, I didn’t really have any

expectations and actually rather enjoyed the movie. Now, two years later, the inevitable sequel

makes its way into theaters this weekend and unless you have children under the age of eight, do

yourself a favor and star far away from this movie and spend your hard earned cash on

something valuable like a haircut.

Taking place a year after the first film, we meet up with our favorite band of brothers Raphael

(Alan Ritchson), Michael Angelo (Noel Fisher), Leonardo (Johnny Knoxville) and Donatello

(Jeremy Howard) as they continue to hide in the shadows and quietly protect the city of New

York. After their arch rival Shredder (Brian Tee) escapes from prison with the help from a man

by the name of Baxter Stockman (a very awkward and out of place Tyler Perry), the turtles,

along with some help from April O’Neil (a surprisingly good Megan Fox) and newcomers Casey

Jones (Stephen Amell having a blast) and the new District Attorney Rebecca Vincent (Laura

Linney) race against the clock before Shredder can succeed in bringing the world to its ultimate

destruction.

As fun as this film tries to be, I knew within ten minutes that I was about to sit through one of the

worst movies I’d ever see. In fact, I almost walked out of the theater on three separate occasions

but I decided to stick it out in hopes that it would get better and although the ending slightly

picks up, I still ended up going home feeling like I had wasted a good hour and a half of my life.

“TMNT” has a lot of problems throughout the film but its biggest problem lies within the most

important element of any movie…the writing. I can’t remember the last time I watched a movie

with such terrible writing, more specifically in the dialog. There were so many cringe worthy

lines within this movie that it honestly felt like a 14 year old boy with a laptop had written it and

the studio realized it’d be cheaper to pay him for his script than an actual screen writer. Looking

back on it, the dialog really was what ruined it for me the most. I didn’t mind the movie’s simple

and slightly goofy plot. I didn’t mind the terribly designed CGI turtles. I didn’t even mind the

movie’s poorly orchestrated sound track but, I draw the line at characters spouting out phrases

like “What are you chicken?” “Who are you killing chicken, turtle?” and “I said turtle

formation!” “Oh! I thought you said squirrel formation!” The jokes can only be described as

mild potty humor at best, with the only people who will find them funny are those who haven’t

even entered middle school yet. It makes my heart hurt just thinking about the number of parents

who will be sitting through this movie this coming weekend to make their children happy.

Parenting really is the hardest job out there…

Another thing that I found incredibly frustrating about this movie was that it was filled with so

much potential and yet the movie never took advantage of any of those moments. I don’t really

want to go into detail because as bad as this movie is, I still hate spoiling films for others but,

there is one thing I’d like to touch on to prove my point (WARNING: SPOILER ALERT!).

There’s a moment in the film where the turtles are presented with an opportunity to become

human and blend in with the rest of the world. This is important because throughout the entire

movie Raphael struggles with feeling like an outsider who will never have the chance to live a

normal life. There was real opportunity here to turn this into an interesting and emotional plot

point but instead it’s simply grazed over and only talked about once before they drop it all

together. I was really hoping that at least Raphael would have chosen to become human because

it would have been something completely different and new and yet he never does. In fact none

of the turtles do so I was confused as to why they even brought that storyline into the plot to

begin with if they had no intentions of elaborating on it. I think they were going for a whole “just

be yourself and love who you are” type of message which is something I agree with yes, but it

still would have been fascinating to see them transform who they were to fit in with the crowd

before realizing that they were fine just the way they are and don’t have to change themselves to

make a difference in the world.

As bad as the movie is, it still has a few rays of sunshine that make it almost bearable to watch.

The human cast all looked like they were having fun on screen, especially Stephan Amell who

looked like he was extremely excited to be there. In fact every scene he was in, even the

“emotional” scenes, he always looked like he had a small grin on his face and I had a lot of fun

watching him on screen and he truly was the saving grace of the movie. There’s also a pretty

thrilling plane heist scene that’s a lot of fun to watch but sadly it doesn’t appear until the last

twenty minutes of the movie which leads it into the equally fun climactic battle. It’s just a shame

that the movie decided to save all of its best moments for the end because everything that comes

before it is simply draining to sit through.

Overall this film is just a mess. I really don’t have much to say really say other than the fact that

it is absolutely terrible. It had some of the worst CGI I’ve ever seen and I don’t think I’ll ever be

able to forgive it for its horrendous dialog. The bottom line: “TMNT” is not only the worst

movie of the summer so far but it is easily the worst movie of 2016 to date. Do yourself a favor

and don’t waste your time and hard earned cash on a film such as this.

Keith Ariaz

keithariaz1@gmail.com