Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Rated 1.0

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was produced by Michael Bay, so it's no surprise that it is choppy, witless, overbearing and casually cruel. However, it was directed not by Bay, but by a faceless hack named Jonathan Liebesman, so the film doesn't even offer the saving grace of Bay's insane logistics, fascinating egotism and occasional use of practical effects. It's just an entry-level Bay knockoff for the Saturday-morning cartoon crowd, and only the spectacle of CGI creatures acting rings around their human co-stars passes for entertainment. Megan Fox plays April O'Neil, a plucky TV reporter (the embalmed Fox does not do “plucky” well), who unearths a malevolent figure named Shredder while researching a story. Shredder has a nefarious plan that ends with him lording over a corpse-strewn quarantine zone that will make him rich and powerful somehow, which makes as much sense as anything else here.