Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:
Mutant Mayhem

4 outta 5

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is yet another one of the various reboots of the TMNT franchise. Happily, this turns out to be one of the best ones with inventive visuals and fun character moments. Heck, Mutant is in the title twice, so it really embraces the icky of the Mutant part of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise. Probably a reason TMNT is pushing four decades now is the draw of mutants, kung-fu and the brothers’ distinct personalities. For mutant turtles, they’re remarkably lovable.

Four mutated turtle teenage brothers, Leonardo (Nicolas Cantu), Donatello (Micah Abbey), Michaelangelo (Shamon Brown Jr.) and Raphel (Brady Noon) live in the sewers with their mutated rat father, Master Splinter (Jackie Chan). Splinter has drilled into the boys’ heads that if humans ever discover them, they will be hated, feared, attacked, and even milked. One day they save April O’Neil (Ayo Edebiri) from having her scooter stolen, and the high school journalist April is inquisitive about the teenage turtles. The boys also want to learn as much about April’s high school as they yearn for as a connection with the outside world. Their crime fighting brings them into contact with the giant mutated Superfly (Ice Cube) with a crew of mutated freaks like Mondo Gekko (Paul Rudd), Bebop (Seth Rogen), Rocksteady (John Cena) and many more. Superfly hates humanity for killing off his “father”, Baxter Stockman (Giancarlo Esposito) and wants to turn all humans into mutant freaks. But if turtle brothers try to stop him they might just reveal themselves to the world.

The look seems to be very much inspired by the Spider-Verse movies, with a flickering frame rate and thick jagged line edges on the characters. Although one difference is that Spider-Verse is emulating the look of the comic book source, Mutant Mayhem’s animation feels like moving wall graffiti. It is a little jarring as that style has been so closely associated with Spider-Verse but at least it proves animation in North American features are finally starting to branch out, as opposed to the last two decades of everything looking like Disney/Pixar. The animation style makes the action scenes feel kinetic and the turtles emote well. Throughout the years each of the turtles have gotten a distinctive look, and this adds a bit more. Donatello wearing glasses which are like the goggles he’s had in a few versions, or Raphel wearing a headband which was added to the character design later, or bringing back the letters of their names on their belt buckles like in the 1987 cartoon. The designs land somewhere in between the original comic book and the iconic ’87 animated series, but the animation makes this feel unique.

The vocal performance by all four of the turtles has a youthful energy and each turtle gets in a standout moment. Cantu as Leonardo has a great moment when he sees April and is immediately infatuated with her, calling upon the turtles to save her immediately and one of the boys says, “I think all of his hormones kicked in at once”.  This version of Splinter is less of the stoic wise man and a bit of a doting senior citizen. He’s so freaked out by a bad encounter with humanity he wants to hide away and, considering humans’ reactions to the mutants, he’s kind of justified. One of the more interesting emotional aspects of the film is when the brothers finally face the world, they must deal with people looking at them as monsters.

This version of April is a lot different from the ’87 cartoon as she’s a high school student and not an ace reporter. There’s a funny and extremely intentionally gross bit about April becoming nervous and puking when on camera which gets replayed and remixed throughout. Ice T as Superfly has some great moments where he’ll just straight up drop lyrics from Ice T songs, like when he kicks down the turtle’s vehicle door and says, “6 in the morning, police at my door.” Is it weird that Ice T’s Superfly quotes Ice T songs? Probably, but funny! The design of the mutants are all incredibly gross. Rudd’s performance as Mondo Geko is very fidgety. Also, amusingly, he’s credited as “Introducing Paul Rudd” even though he first had an “Introducing” credit decades ago in a Halloween sequel. Rogen and Cena as the henchmen Bebop and Rocksteady have a loudly chaotic delivery. TMNT often straddles between samurai epic and monster chaos, this leads more on the latter side. Esposito’s Baxter Stockman is basically just in the opening scene and disappears, which is a weird fate for such a major character. But there’s a different mad scientist here instead, Cynthia Utrom (Maya Rudolph), who has a giant cranium like big brain alien classic Turtles baddie, Krang. Her role is seemingly more about setting up sequels, especially in the mid-credits’ teaser.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is a very fun return to the TMNT world. And it has some solid character stuff with the brothers to make it work emotionally, and the visuals and action are incredibly cool to watch. Also, there aren’t a lot of movies where the climax involves a giant mixed up mutant wisecracking kaiju voiced by Ice T, so that makes for unique Mutant Mayhem.