Seven years after “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2”, Leonardo, Raphaël, Donatello and Michelangelo are back in a film with disappointing animation and stifled potential by fan service.
To make a profitable film even without inspiration, the directors of Ninja Turtles: Teenage Years took the easy way out and copied the fate of a neighboring hero who also lives in New York: Spider-Man.
By opting for animation, they abandon the difficulty of staging the four turtles in a hostile human world and settle for a origin story banal, stuffed with references to pop culture, to the point of wondering if we are at the cinema or at bingo. drake, The attack of the Titans, madmax, 4 No Blondes… What if the dreaded multiverse was simply a network of winks launched to flatter viewers?
Four turtles against a fly
The group of teenagers, accompanied by an April O’Neil who dreams of being a journalist, confronts Superfly, an enemy unknown to the battalion and born from the same mutagen as the Ninja Turtles. If that foreshadowed a bit of novelty, the story only resumes a heavy and exhausted narrative scheme. In revenge, a fly wishes to transform all animals into mutants, and force humans to become slaves. Height of disappointment, the action scenes remain illegible in spaces yet rich, conducive and varied.
Ninja Turtles: Teenage Years by Jeff Rowe, Kyler Spears – in theaters August 9