Reptile Vigilantes

It cannot be easy making a convincing storyline about four Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and their mutant rat chief, living in the sewers of New York, being overly fond of pizza, and going out of their way to save New York from a copybook gang. To its credit, the movie pulls it off, thanks to in part the disconcertingly attractive journalist April (Megan Fox), the excellent special effects - notably an avalanche and some capers atop the Empire State Building, and an easy-as-pizza-to-digest storyline (call it a bare shell of a plot?) where all key players are inexplicably intertwined. In the balance, an excellent treat for kids, and for adults like yours truly, not a bad deal either

14/20

Someone Transform this Series

One part of me wants to trash Transformers II – Revenge of the Fallen so bad that Michael Bay and his merry men would think twice before turning this into a trilogy. Another part, however, asks – what is it we were expecting anyway. Sam Witwicky, vulnerable and quite the center of affairs. Megan Fox, sizzling, a modicum of dialogue also thrown in for effect. Relentless action sequences (with the added side effect of trashing the last of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World). This is a teenage movie series, and we stepped in, forewarned of the same, and got everything that we might have expected. The question is – did this movie lift the franchise to a higher level? Did it lend character to Optimus Prime the way it clearly sought to do. Did you want us to make up our minds about whether humans should be taking sides in an extraterrestrial battle, or whether the Autobots should be sharing their technology with humans. I guess not, because this movie did not quite click

9/20