I hardly ever do movie reviews, mostly due to lack of time these days, but for the sake of continuity I felt compelled to continue on with what I started back when I did a review for the first new TMNT movie back in 2014. I said back then that I hoped the inevitable sequel would have a bit more fun. They obliged. The sequel decides to double down on wackiness and insanity and go full cartoon on the audience.

Once again Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo and Raphael must go up against the dreaded Foot Clan, arguably the worst ninjas in existence, led by the spiky villain Shredder who has added backup this time thanks to a mutated duo known as Bebop and Rocksteady, evil scientist Baxter Stockman and a talking brain with a robot combat frame named Krang. The turtles are joined by the returning April O’Neil and cameraman Vernon, as well as hockey playing do-gooder Casey Jones.

Move over Tokka and Razaar.

As with the last TMNT film, the human characters mostly serve to move the plot along so that the CGI characters can all start punching and kicking each other over the course of the movie. In fact, viewing this as a live-action extended Saturday Morning Cartoon is the best way to approach the film. The CGI used has the strange effect of making the old cartoon characters look lively enough, but still retain a cartoonish factor that never gets lost. The turtles themselves look improved from their last outing, looking slightly less freakish and ugly for a bunch of mutated turtles. We also get more time with the turtles than the previous movie, though nothing quite as good as the elevator scene.

The four turtles continue being their unique selves, a united front with the occasional brotherly angst betwixt the four of them while all retaining their own personalities. Donatello being the nerdy one, Leonardo the team leader, etc, while Bebop and Rocksteady are extremely simple minded, disgusting and thuggish in their low-brow buffoonish approach to everything. They don’t steal the scene so much as blast through it with their ostentatious presence and chemistry. This is in contrast to the Shredder’s calm fury at being the seemingly only sane man of the villainous group (a trait I wish had been played upon MUCH more than maybe a scene or two), Stockman’s mad scientist and Krang’s over-the-top world domination.

Even ninjas are no match for hockey skills.

As for the plot itself, does it really matter? Four mutated pizza-loving turtle brothers, a reporter, and a guy in a hockey mask have to fight a mutated warthog and rhino, an army of ninjas led by a walking kitchen utensil, and an extradimensional brain-like alien who sits in the stomach of a giant humanoid robot while plotting to conquer the world with a giant round doomsday machine called the Technodrome.

Yes, TMNT 2 is absolutely pulling on the old ’87 cartoon nostalgia by dredging up characters like Bebop and Rocksteady. No, this still is not the worst movie to ever come out of the Ninja Turtles franchise–that honor still belongs to 1993’s feudal Japan time-traveling flick. To quote myself from my previous review, there are many cliches, a fair amount of cheese, and they just run with it. Villains are blatantly evil, plans are laid out, big final battle sequence, a fairly simple plot, the works. It’s a movie that, when it wants to have fun, does have fun with it. Kids will probably like it more than adults.