Happy half term y'alls. And we know what that means...…...a desperate struggle to find those handful of hours that will keep junior entertained and you not needing to throw something at the screen in anger/hatred/boredom/all three. So its time to revisit the old collection and see what potential gems are lurking in there...…...
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows (US iTunes)
Much like the first film, the turtles themselves are surprisingly good, both design, CG and character-wise. Megan Fox is there wholly inappropriately and purely for the dads/older Turtle fans as she steams up the screen in her skin tight outfits every opportunity she gets. And Will Arnett is awesome, yet at the same time awesomely underused.
Some of the setpieces are pretty decent - the mid-air plane to plane jump and subsequent crash into the Amazonian rainforest is really rather good and puts the recent similar one in Terminator: Dark Fate to shame - and even Krang, one of the more ridiculous villains of Turtle lore is realised pretty ickily and niftily.
But everything else, and I do mean EVERYTHING else, is risible. The plot is yet more dimensional-hopping, portal above New York to bring through the world crushing Big Bad, yet this time populated with schoolkid technobabble that feels like its been lifted directly from one of the cartoon episodes. Stephen Amell is hideous as Casey Jones and the less said about BeBop and Rocksteady the better. Even Laura Linney does her best impression of someone who was told she would be acting opposite real humans, and yet ends up talking to thin air, her frustration and anger at having to do so so obvious in her performance, her face, her everything.
Its not terrible - the Turtles do have some nice chemistry (as far as collective groupings of pixels go) and its nice to see superhero's enjoying themselves being, you know, super - and yet at the same time, it really is. Right now, I'm off to relive the film's best and most hideously inappropriate scene by googling 'Megan Fox Schoolgirl Spy scene'...…….try it and you'll see what I mean...…..remember this is supposed to be a KIDS film...…...
Come back Michael Bay, your brand of toxic sexuality somehow seems innocently charming after that...…...
The Addams Family (2019, US iTunes)
Its the classic Charles Addams' family given the Hotel Transylvania treatment. And while not terrible, it makes one crucial mistake - it sidelines Gomez and Morticia, the best part of any version of the Addams, almost to the point of them being bitpart players in their own movie.
A typical Frankenstein opening (villagers, pitchforks, torches, etc) forces our newlywed couple to relocate somewhere less dangerous - New Jersey - whereby the take over an abandoned asylum and retire to raise Wednesday and Puggsley in relative secret. But one reality TV makeover presenter and her goth wannabe teenage daughter later, its business as usual as the extended Addams' family also descend to watch Puggsley complete his rite of manhood...…...
Again, its not terrible - the vein of dark humour is very much present, with Moretz and Wolfhard amusingly depressing as the two junior members of the family. Pimping out cousin It as a hairy Snoop Dogg is nowhere near as annoying as it sounds and it skewers reality TV royally which is never a bad thing in my book.
But there's just not enough delicious Gomez and Morticia. At all. Isaacs and Theron do sterling work when they're allowed to, but there's too much of the teenagers and the modern world skewering, to the expense of the dark wit of the skewed family dynamic. Fester is almost totally absent an even Bette Midler's Grandma is given far too short thrift. It feels like the family element and dynamic is pushed to one side in favour of broader and more mainstream plotting and gags.
But its passable and a little spikier than the Hotel Transylvania series, so in terms of keeping you entertained as much as Junior, its not bad. Just not...….particularly good.