Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows (2016)

How do you fix a follow-up to a film that was mostly panned by fans of the franchise, because it strayed too far from pretty much everything said franchise had established?

You go completely the other way and just make it all about fan-service.

Is this a decent film then? Heck no. But it sure has a plethora of nods and winks to the cartoon many people grew up with, namely the 80s version. Come on, the end credits are even shown over a rendition of the theme song from that show!

One year after the events of the previous one, the Turtles are still the unseen protectors of the city. Vern Fenwick has taken the credit for taking out the Shredder (which makes zero sense, seeing as it was April who did that, but hey: who cares about continuity, right?); April is apparently rehired as a reporter, but also moonlights as detective somehow? If all this seems out of left field, it's because it is. 

Anyway, Shredder is still very much alive and roughly 40 years younger now and when he is being transported to a maximum security prison, his Foot Clan breaks him out, with a little help of two idiot thugs named Bebop and Rocksteady.

Yes, those two.

The officer in charge of the transport, sort of? Casey Jones. You can see they were stuffing everything into this one. Oh, and Shredder is actually teleported by a scientist named Baxter Stockman. Yes, him.

The teleport goes a little off and Shredder then comes face to face with an alien in a robot suit called Krang, who wants his Technodrome transported to Earth in order to rule, but he is missing pieces. Shredder then goes on the search for these pieces after mutating Bebop and Rocksteady into their warthog and rhino-forms and...

I'm sorry. This is all getting a bit too much. 

There literally is no plot, none. This film is just an excuse to cram as many characters from the 80s cartoon in the film and even then they don't always get them right. Biggest loser in that department is Casey Jones, who now is a whiny police officer. You would think that fan favourites as Bebop, Rocksteady and Krang would fix all this, but they are in the film so little, it doesn't even make a mark. It's just so all over the place, it's ridiculous. 

You see, being a fan of the original cartoon and franchise, at first it felt like a feast of recognition and I won't lie: it can be a lot of fun watching these characters come together again (especially the villains). But they forgot any development of their character and it's just too overstuffed to make any sense. Sure, they've got time for fart jokes, but none for actual plot and coherence. 

You could see this one as a live action version of the cartoon, but the cartoon - even in its insane moments - had better writing and was simply more fun. And it is so far removed from the first one, that people who had never seen anything Turtle-related before, will be left feeling flabbergasted and exhausted. 

Don't get me started on the horrendous way several characters forcefeed exposition, because that's just not okay. Not at all.

So yes, alas, this one sucks the big time. Chances are, it might be a little fun watching this with friends that also know the lore and cartoon very well and if you get a little drunk. Otherwise, it's just exhausting, bloated and downright stupid.