“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” is surprisingly generic for a film about talking mutants that do karate, and it never stops being a mediocre action film in its entire running time. The turtles look strange, the writing is really dumb, and it’s way less fun than any of the “Turtle” films have been in the past.

In “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” Channel 6 news reporter April O’Neil, played by Megan Fox, is witness to a robbery perpetrated by the notorious criminal group the Foot Clan that is stopped by a strange figure. While investigating the Foot Clan further, she finds the four turtles again foiling the group, discovering their identities as a group of humanoid turtles that live in the sewers of New York and fight crime. After she discovers a deeper connection with the turtles, she and the four fighters have to fight a great evil that is crippling the city and discover how the turtles came to be.

My biggest issues with the film is how uneven the story is and how little charm the turtles interacting with one another is. The finale of the movie does ramp up the intensity of the film, and the action scenes managed to let a few interesting ideas through, but by that point all you really knew about characters is that they like to spout random one-liners.

The lackluster dialogue is nothing compared to how boring and predictable the plot of the film is. It’s not clear exactly why Shredder want’s the turtles’ DNA or why O’Neil wouldn’t consider the talking turtles she just met a good story to report on. The plot could have been from any bland action movie and without good chemistry or dialogue between characters there’s not much the film did well.

I did enjoy Will Arnett as April O’Neil’s camera guy, but it just made the rest of the film sadder by comparison. Tony Shalhoub wasn’t a terrible choice for the voice of Splinter, but Johnny Knoxville definitely stood out as the only “celebrity” turtle voice.  I’m also not the first person to say that the turtles look really weird, but I did kind of like the gross rat version of Splinter this film created. It definitely suffers from too many fart jokes and an overabundance of forced exposition.

1 out of 5 Stars