Review: 'Ninja Turtles' sequel is a cartoon on steroids

Not that a live-action "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" sequel owes anything at all to an adult audience, but in an age where comic books of every stripe are tailored to be must-sees for ages 8 to 80, it's a little disarming to find one hopeful franchise that is really and truly for kids.

"Out of the Shadows" kicks off with Shredder (played this time by Brian Tee instead of Tohoru Masamune) breaking out of a police convoy, and effectively escaping the Turtles' nunchuck-wielding, manhole cover launching garbage truck/war machine.

Shredder teams up with the mad scientist Baxter Stockman (Tyler Perry, chewing the scenery somewhat gloriously) to try to open up a portal to another dimension so that Krang — a truly grotesque disembodied alien brain that one of the Turtles refers to as "chewed gum with a face" — can take over Earth.

Stephen Amell joins as Casey Jones, an earnest dolt who's pretty handy with a hockey puck, but who needs a little work on his one-liners.

[...] there's Laura Linney — three-time Oscar nominee and general class act Laura Linney — playing the skeptical police chief for some ungodly reason.

[...] for most of us, the joys that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were able to provide had a definite expiration date, and no amount of CGI-spectacle or professional athlete or supermodel cameos are going to change that.

Out of the Shadows, a Paramount Pictures release, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America for sci-fi action violence.