The Movie That Had One Critic 'Yearning for Death' Triumphs at the Box Office

The movie may stink, but audiences are shelling out for the "Turtles" anyway.

As the Associated Press reported:

Studio estimates say "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" sliced off $65 million at the weekend box office.

The Paramount comic-book adaptation featuring Megan Fox alongside computer-generated renditions of the pizza-eating, sewer-dwelling superheroes lunged into first place in its debut weekend.

The studio announced plans Sunday for a sequel scheduled for June 3, 2016.

Marvel's cosmic romp "Guardians of the Galaxy" starring Chris Pratt and Zoe Saldana as members of an intergalactic band of do-gooders slid into second place in its second weekend, with $41.5 million, bringing its total domestic haul to $175.9 million.

The Warner Bros. disaster film "Into the Storm" touched down in third place with $18 million.

The new "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" film holds a dismal "19 percent fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes — certified "rotten."

A statute of Donatello is seen at the premiere of 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' on August 3, 2014 at the Regency Village Theater in Los Angeles. Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images

The review-aggregating site's assessment of the movie is blunt and harsh: "Neither entertaining enough to recommend nor remarkably awful, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles may bear the distinction of being the dullest movie ever made about talking bipedal reptiles."

Salon reviewer Andrew O'Hehir wrote that the "CGI goofball nightmare" of a movie induced in him a "profound yearning for death."

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