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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3D

5/10

Stars: Megan Fox, Will Arnett, William Fichtner, Danny Woodburn, Abby Elliott, Noel Fisher, Jeremy Howard, Pete Ploszek, Alan Ritchson, Minae Noji, Whoopi Goldberg, Tohoru Masamune. Voices: Johnny Knoxville, Tony Shalhoub

Director: Jonathan Liebesman

Given the title, it would be pointless to expect anything other than one more juvenile-aimed instalment of the animated adventures of the gaudy turtle heroes and that’s just exactly what the heroes in a half shell deliver, competently aided and abetted by director Jonathan Liebesman, scenarists Josh Appelbaum, Andre Neme and Evan Daugherty and a brave supporting cast of mere human performers.

The plot is simple – the Ninja Turtles emerge from the sewers and into daylight to save the Big Apple from being bitten to the core by from the evil Shredder and his notorious Foot Clan whose heavies are terrorising the city.

Smart special effects and effective enough 3D cinematography (Lula Carvalho) bring the roistering reptiles to larger-than-life life leaving the two-legged actors to fill in the gaps between lively cartoonish action sequences. Megan Fox leads the humans as a TV reporter seeking the villains and coming across the Turtles instead, Will Arnett is her cameraman, Whoopi Goldberg coasts through the role of Fox’s sceptical editor and William Fichtner makes a smooth villain. All the humans deserve praise for keeping straight faces in the face of the mad mayhem around them.

And if you’re looking for a subtext, the best I can offer is that Michael Bay produced the product-placement epic.

(The star rating is for kids: accompanying adults would be best advised to take Valium and earplugs)

Alan Frank

USA 2014. UK Distributor: Paramount. Colour by FotoKem.
101 minutes. Widescreen. UK certificate: 12A.

Guidance ratings (out of 3): Sex/nudity 0, Violence/Horror 0, Drugs 0, Swearing 0.

Review date: 31 Oct 2014