Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
**This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn’t exist.
My main memories of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles revolve around the hard-as-Hell video games for the property. They were still fun, but a challenge. I didn’t really follow the movies, and barely remember the cartoon series. I think the 2007 animated film was the first movie I’d seen theatrically. All this is to say, while the heroes in a half shell have been part of my pop culture diet over the years, it’s been a relatively minor one. That said, “Mutant Mayhem,” a new version of the franchise from co-writer/co-producer Seth Rogen, had me compelled to dive in. I wasn’t disappointed.
The animation style employed by co-directors Jeff Rowe and Kyler Spears feels very akin to what we have seen in the “Spider-Verse” films, with frequently-evolving lighting and backgrounds enhanced by an almost impressionist approach to the landscapes. The characters feel like they are molded out of clay- that is that tactile nature with which they are rendered; with a loving nature. While I do not know if I like this animation style more than the “Spider-Verse” films, there’s a chaotic energy to both that adds another layer of entertainment to the experience, as well as distinguishing it from other the animated features we’ve seen this year from Hollywood.
One of the touches this film explores, probably for the first time, is that the titular turtles are written as teenagers. In previous iterations, they’ve always felt like young adults who gout crime. The conscious decision in the script by Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, co-director Jeff Rowe, Dan Hernandez and Benji Samit to have them basically going through puberty, as it were, looking to change after their life in the sewers with their Master Splinter (voiced by Jackie Chan). Splinter has a healthy distrust of humanity, which he has passed on to Leonardo (Nicolas Cantu), Donatello (Micah Abbey), Raphael (Brady Noon) and Michaelangelo (Shamon Brown Jr.). But the boys want to be with the world, and go to high school. When a supervillain seems to stealing items to try and recreate the same process that formed the ooze that made the Turtles and Splinter who they were, they might need to be heroes, as well.
The film by Jeff Rowe and Kyler Spears does a great job of being fun, feeling a bit on the edgy side, while also being heartwarming coming-of-age comedy that is enhanced by the introduction of April O’Neil (Ayo Edebiri), a nerdy hopeful journalist who’s a misfit herself. The film’s affection for outsiders and people outside of the norm is a great counter to the film’s visual and musical style, with a soundtrack of hip-hop songs working with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s terrific score. We see some of the rogues gallery people are familiar with like Bebop (Rogen) and Rocksteady (John Cena) as well as a lot of it that isn’t as familiar, including Superfly (Ice Cube) and Wingnut (Natasia Demetriou), none of whom are as simply bad guys but, like the Turtles, seem to just want acceptance. This is a great cast in a film that digs a little deeper while feeling like a hit of Ninja Turtles entertainment. Turtle power lives on.
