'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows' for kids only

‘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 actively avoid.

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. They’re the one audience who will just let the nonsense wash over them.

“Out of the Shadows” kicks off with Shredder (Brian Tee) breaking out of a police convoy, and effectively escaping the Turtles’ nunchuck-wielding, manhole cover launching garbage truck/war machine.

The objectives of the bad guys are a little grander this time. 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 - can take over Earth. I think.

The plot, of course, is over-the-top gobbledygook. A conflict-of-the-week done on a massive that pauses from the set-pieces once in a while to leer at April O’Neil (Megan Fox). Fox, once again, is Teflon here. She fares fine, and better than most of the humans.

The Turtles actually get a little more to do this time around and the dynamics between Michelangelo (Noel Fisher), Donatello (Jeremy Howard), Leonardo (Pete Ploszek) and Raphael (Alan Ritchson) are not only given more breathing room but even outright explanations too.

The “Turtles” are and always have been for the kids. They can have it.