Film Brief: 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' (2014)

Apparently not done with the Transformers series, Michael Bay gets behind (this time as a producer) another franchise spawned in the 1980s, this one inspired by comics and "bad television" and Jonathan Liebesman (Battle: Los Angeles, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning) sits in the director's chair (Stephen Sommers or Jon M. Chu of the G.I. Joe series might have been more preferable choices).  Transformers deportee and subsequent quisling Megan Fox leads the cast in the role of TV reporter April O'Neil and plays against a set of motion-captured titular heroes-in-a-half-shell (if they had employed rubber suits and animatronics as the '90s flicks had done, this would perhaps be the closest we'd get to a XXX parody featuring Sasha Grey).  Fox is rubbish for almost the entire film and would be better suited to staying in the likes of the genuinely interesting horror Jennifer's Body (2009) or the really disposable fantasy Western Jonah Hex (2010), both of which would find a place for a stay-up-all-night boy's sleepover party - which is also the best place for this ultimately could-have-been-worse, fairly innocuous fare.  The presumably Bay-sanctioned sexuality is reined in (there is brief voyeurism of Megan Fox's albeit clothed derriere and a product placement for Victoria's Secret - cf. Transformers: Age Of Extinction, 2014) and the PG-13-rated "sci-fi action violence" shows that we are a long way from the days when Turtle violence had been reduced after parental feedback and the fight scenes were all about the choreography.  The villains' masterplan also bears much resemblance to both Avengers Assemble (2012) and The Amazing Spider-Man (2012).