Film: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Out Of The Shadows

Starring: Megan Fox, Will Arnett, Stephen Amell

Directed by: Dave Green

Movie Review: Just when I had given up hope of ever seeing a fun super-hero film—what with all of them choosing to go the top-heavy existential way—comes this superhero hell-raiser blues-chaser, the most enjoyable, light-footed ,fast-paced and grandly designed super-hero yarn, and yet true to the comic book spirit.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is as intellectually equipped to handle the Shakespearean dilemma—to be or not to be ponderous—as the film’s kneejerk attitude to heart-in-the-mouth heroism allows it to be.

This is a film with the smartest most deviously constructed chase and action sequences on this side of Rush Hour. Not that anyone is trying to impress with their smartness.It’s all done in the spirit of an ongoing gag. Filled with a sense of wacked-out wonderment, this is that easygoing unfettered super-hero film that we were waiting for, but didn’t know where to look without running into self-important philosophizing pseudo-heroes who came at us with so much gravity that we were left shuddering in penitence.

So here’s the deal, then. The four Ninjas Turtles Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo, Donatello are back with a blather .They are brighter more focused and certainly able to carry out the steep hijinks with far more panache on this occasion than the earlier phase of the franchise. In fact this film—clocking into just two hours of exacerbated joy and enjoyment—opens with a steep chase on the roads of NY where a dreaded terrorist Shredder is being taken to prison.

There is an ambush that whisks Shredder away. But before that happens the Ninjas revved up with glorious gadgets fitted into a van that resembles a video-game parlour, zooms into the picture to create some of the most ravishing bedlam seen in recent times.

Director Dave Green keeps the characters vibrant and alert and yet somewhat intellectually challenged. You know his human hero, a not-so-smart disgraced cop Casey Jones(Stephen Amell) is capable of pulling off a clanger any time. His female counterpart April(played by the opulently sexy Megan Fox) is no better. I mean,tell me, what is so smart about hack-copying an outlawed academician’s data in a crowded restaurant using a device which can at best be called a James Bond carryover?Even the four Ninjas trapeze swiftly from smart to clueless when three of them decide they want to look ‘human’

(Aside: if the Turtles look like us, what is the point of the franchise? Mercifully the idea is dropped)

It is the intellectual uncertainty hovering spookily close to the edge of the plot that makes this the most fun-filled super-hero film in recent times, far more regaling in its irreverent homage to machismo than the dreadfullyselfimportant Captain America Civil War, Batman Versus Superman and most recently X Men Apocalypse Now.

Unhinged and goofy Teenage Mutant , etc etc is shot like a binge on tequila consumed on a night when the stakes are high and the craving for adventure and fun even higher.

The film is terrifically packaged . The revulsion generated by some of the characters including an extra-terrestialvillain that looks like human brain with tentacles, is meant to remind us that the space which divides comicbookaction from creative orgying is non-negotiable.The action scenes of apocalypse(yeah yeah the world is threatened by extinction here also) are filmed with a giggling gusto.

The film is loads of fun because it doesn’t take its heroism to the level of megalomaniacal machismo. Some of the heroism specially pertaining to New York’s mirthfully informal mayor(Will Arnett) is so splendidly self-mocking you end of celebrating the return of the fun element in the super-hero genre.

This weekend don’t even think about any other film. Take your kids and rush to see Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles : Out Of The Shadows .This super-fun super-hero film is funny charming, goofy and unexpectedly gyani. The quirky quartet of kachuas are at their cornily valorous crest. Leave the rest. This is where the fun begins.