For the second weekend in a row, the big theatrical release features CGI animal superheroes. Yet, while Guardians of the Galaxy was one of the most flat out fun to watch movies of the summer, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a chore to sit through. Why is one movie so much better than the other? The answer is simple: Galaxy never takes its premise seriously, while Turtles does on too many occasions.

The current version of TMNT is about the 900^th movie or television show to be based on the 1980s comic book series. Earlier versions were either completely animated or featured live actors wearing turtle costumes. This time out, the Turtles themselves and a few other characters are CGI-animated, but the rest of the characters in the movie are actual humans. The Turtles were once ordinary lab animals used in secret genetic experiments, the results of which were to allow them to grow to over six feet tall, develop somewhat superhuman strength and agility, look like Arnold Schwarzenegger in his Mr. Olympia days, and speak perfect English.  

The Turtles were the result of genetic experiments conducted fifteen years earlier by Eric Sacks (William Fichtner), head of the multinational Sacks Industries. Something went wrong one night, the lab burned down, and the turtles escaped and took refuge in a sewer. Fast forward to the present, and the Turtles, who now go by the names of Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Donatello, have been trained in the martial arts by a fellow escaped experimentee, a lab rat named Splinter who’s now a Ninja master. They occasionally venture out at night (Splinter doesn’t think the world is ready to see them) to fight  the evil Foot Clan, a Ninja gang that is terrorizing the city. Eventually, reporter April O’Neil (Megan Fox), who is the daughter of the now deceased scientist who created the Turtles, spots them. When she loses her job after trying to report her findings, she goes to the only man she thinks can help, her dad’s old boss, Sacks, who is now a wealthy benefactor for the police department.

Of course, anyone who has ever seen an action movie knows that a seemingly-too-good-to-be-true charitable industrial titan is almost invariably actually too good to be true and turns out to be the movie’s criminal mastermind. Such is the case here, as Sacks has aligned himself with Shredder, an evil human Ninja master and leader of the Foot Clan. When Sacks learns the Turtles are alive, he realizes that he can extract a serum from their blood that has wonderful restorative properties. However, being criminal masterminds, Sacks and Shredder intend to unleash a deadly toxin that will kill half of New York and extort the city into paying a fortune for the serum to prevent the other half from being killed.

On the surface, TMNT ‘s plot seems similar to that of Guardians of the Galaxy. The villains here think a bit smaller and only want to destroy a major city instead of a planet but the mindset is the same. However, anyone watching Guardians knew from the get go that the villains' scheme was just a plot hook to give the heroes an excuse to kick ass, which they did in one hilariously entertaining scene after another. Here, the villains seem quite serious, and the storyline is uncomfortably close to actual events (it could be the storyline of a Jack Ryan movie). There’s even a scene in which Sacks captures some of the Turtles and chains them up in order to drain their blood, a procedure that will in all probability kill them.

Fortunately, Sacks’s threats against the Turtles are couched in somewhat obscure language that is likely to go over the head of those young enough to actually take this movie seriously on any level. Everyone over the age of 10 will realize the threat and Sacks’s entire scheme, like the Turtles themselves, is pure hokum. But, unlike the hokum in Guardians, this hokum is tedious, with one poorly staged, dimly lit CGI fight after another between the Turtles and various members of the Foot Clan. TMNT’s one big set piece before the finale is a stupendously ridiculous sequence in which the good guys in an out-of-control 18-wheeler barrel thousands of feet down a snowbound mountain slope pursued by the Foot Clan in their own RV’s. The sequence is long, loud, and filled with 3D moments, but it’s not actually exciting (it also had me wondering how the Matterhorn could somehow have been transported to someplace within an hour’s drive of Manhattan).

What charm and fun there is in the movie originates from the Turtles themselves. They are fun loving, pizza loving, YouTube loving teenagers, who just happen to be giant green reptiles. They also have individual personalities (viewers can tell the difference among the various Turtles largely because of the color of their masks and the gear they wear). The movie would have been better served to devote more time to their personalities, but kids will love (and adults will get a chuckle) seeing them get enthusiastic about seeing a cat playing “Chopsticks” with real chopsticks on a YouTube video.

There are laughs to be had in TMNT, although the younger viewers are, the more laughs they are likely to find. In addition, the finale, in which the Turtles tangle with Shredder (who has been given a giant chrome samurai coat of armor by Sacks) on top of a skyscraper, is rather well staged. This is about the only scene in which the martial arts moves are filmed in sufficient light to allow viewers to follow them, and, largely as a result of the better lighting, it’s fun to watch. It’s not nearly as much fun to watch the ubiquitous product placements in the movie, the most egregious of which appears to be for an actual new Pizza Hut product. These placements crop up in scene after scene, especially when large chunks of the Sacks Industries roof structure start crashing into the New York streets below (a scene that’s practically de rigueur for any superhero movie nowadays). I foresee “Spot the Product Placement” becoming a chugging game when TMNT is released to home video.