New ‘Ninja Turtles’ a cartoon on steroids

‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows” is a Saturday morning cartoon on Michael Bay steroids. For the under 12 set, that’s fine. For the rest of us? It’s something to avoid.

Not that a live-action “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” sequel owes anything to an adult audience, but in an age where comic books 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.

This “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” sequel, produced by Michael Bay and directed by Dave Green (“Earth to Echo”), is so inane that they essentially have to resurrect the main conflict from the first, when the four pizza-crazed reptiles took down Shredder, New York City’s resident bully. “Out of the Shadows” kicks off with Shredder (played this time by Brian Tee) breaking out of a police convoy, and effectively escaping the Turtles’ nunchuck-wielding, manhole cover launching war machine.

Shredder teams up with the mad scientist Baxter Stockman (Tyler Perry) 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. It involves portals and black holes and a purple ooze that can change humans into animals. Baxter explains that all humans have a latent, essential animal in their genes. With a swift dart to the neck, he transforms the thugs Bebop (Gary Anthony Williams) and Rocksteady (WWE star Stephen “Sheamus” Farrelly) into a warthog and rhino.

The plot is over-the-top gobbledygook. A conflict-of-the-week done on a massive, hundred million dollar scale, that pauses from the set pieces once in a while to leer at Megan Fox. Her April O’Neil is made to wear a tiny schoolgirl outfit that she changes into mid-stride in a public place.

Fox is Teflon here. She fares fine, and better than most of the humans, including Will Arnett, who is back as the cameraman turned New York City hero Vernon Fenwick. 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.

And then there’s Laura Linney — three-time Oscar nominee — playing the skeptical police chief for some ungodly reason.

The dynamics between Michelangelo (Noel Fisher), Donatello (Jeremy Howard), Leonardo (Pete Ploszek) and Raphael (Alan Ritchson) are given more breathing room.

You need look no further than the fluttery vocal stylings of Krang to know that this is just a more expensive version of the thing you used to watch in your pajamas while eating a bowl of cereal. If that sounds like a good thing, “Out of the Shadows” might be for you. The “Turtles” are and always have been for the kids.