Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Big Hollywood spectacle filmmaker Michael Bay here reboots the titular long-running franchise centering on heroic anthropomorphic turtles skilled in the martial arts, which started out as an underground comic and morphed into a worldwide phenomenon. Mixing CGI and live-action, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles once again tells the origins story of a quartet of wise-cracking terrapins named after artists, who are raised in the New York sewers by Splinter, a rat serving as their sensei, and wind up battling against a ninja-themed crime syndicate led by the gruesome Shredder—a malcontent in league with a villainous scientist. The plot is obviously inane, but more problematic is the level of violence here, which is more suitable to an R-rated action flick (the constant stream of jocular bickering among the turtles while they're performing gymnastic moves and engaging in swordplay doesn't mitigate the carnage). As in any Bay film, the effects are cutting-edge and seamlessly integrated into the live-action footage, but the overall result has little value other than as a technical exercise. Featuring Megan Fox, Will Arnett, and Whoopi Goldberg, the loud, frenetic, and exhausting Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is too nasty for younger children, but audiences went cowabunga in theaters—underscoring Bay's belief that you will never go broke banking on the childish mentality of the modern movie-going public. Not recommended. [Note: Blu-ray extras include the production featurettes “Digital Reality” (18 min.), “Evolutionary Mash-Up” (15 min.),“It Ain't Easy Being Green” (7 min.), “Turtle Rock” with composer Brian Tyler (6 min.), and “In Your Face! The Turtles in 3D” (5 min.), as well as the music video for “Shell Shocked” with a “making-of” the video (2 min.), a brief extended ending, trailers, and bonus DVD, digital, and UltraViolet copies of the film. Bottom line: a solid Blu-ray extras package for a forgettable reboot.] (F. Swietek)