Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem - Movie Review

Critics Score - 8 of 10

General Audience Score - 8 of 10

Kids Score - 9 of 10

Back in the mid-1980’s, a comic book came out featuring four weapon wielding turtles and received a surprising amount of success.

But it wasn’t until 1987 and 1988 that a TV cartoon and series of action figures arrived on the marketplace that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were catapulted into pop culture icons. Since the late 80’s, the band of reptiles have seen several rubber masked and digitally animated incantations hit the silver screen, but now they’re back in theatres with a new animated film from Nickelodeon, TMNT: Mutant Mayhem. The wildly inventive and colorful animation styles blend well with the chaotic energy and youthful vigor of the film. The jokes fly almost as continuously as do the pop culture references, greatly assisting the quick pacing of the just over an hour and a half runtime. While this film is clearly geared towards drawing in Gen Z and younger kids, there’s plenty here for adults as well and those that grew up loving the Ninja Turtles when they hit their prime back in the late 80’s & early 90’s. If you were never a fan of the TMNT series or had the toys, it’s still entertaining enough for most other audiences, but for lovers of the franchise, these Mutants and all their Mayhem will be one of the more outstanding pieces of cinema you watch this summer.

SYNOPSIS - The film of these heroes in a half shell starts with a van full of a highly specialized type of S.W.A.T. team members about to break into a man’s laboratory. We ride in the back of the vehicle at night with the men dressed like riot police until we finally get to see their commander, in the blackness a man whose face is lit underneath with a glowing red light and looks a bit like Maui from Moana. What can I say? Almost immediately the film’s visuals and animated styling strike out from the screen, the dark colors mixed with bright neons in hues of pink, green and blue sticking out like sore thumbs amidst the overwhelmingly black and grey world we’ve entered. This special forces unit is going after Dr. Baxter Stockman, a bug-eyed scientist that’s gone rogue, he’s holed up in a laboratory developing a green ooze that can create mutations in anything it comes in contact with. The good doctor is trying to create a family of mutants using a variety of all different creatures, but as the unit crashes his party, one of his creations, a fly the size of a baby, escapes. After trying to catch the creature, a rogue bullet finds it’s way into a group of oxygen tanks, sending an explosion ripping through the lab, with a bottle of the green liquid getting inadvertently knocked down a sewer pipe. The ensuing sequence depicts a green stream of liquid flowing through the sewer system as some upbeat techno music pumps into our ears, the film’s title appears followed by the words 15 Years Later . . . 

We see a blue mask laying on a stand, two turtle hands reach out to pick it up and put it on, the camera view is in a first person perspective, as if we will be the one wearing it. We see a bow staff spinning, swords twirling before getting sheathed, nunchucks being swung around and twin sai’s be scraped together by some shadowy green figures. We finally see a manhole cover shoot off and out bound Leonardo (voiced by Nicolas Cantu), Donatello (Micah Abbey), Michelangelo (Shamon Brown Jr.) and Raphael (Brady Noon) into the night, up a building’s fire escape and across New York City’s rooftops. But as we soon discover, their mission that, as Leonardo says, will “use stealth and cunning to infiltrate the human world”, is really just a trip that their rat “father” Master Splinter (Jackie Chan), sent them on to get groceries. But on their way home from the store, these four teenage recluses stop in at the park to watch a movie playing outdoors, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and we get a glimpse of the sheltered lives these kids have lived up to this point. Eventually the turtle bros bump into the frequently queasy April O’Neil (Ayo Edebiri) when she gets her scooter stolen and the teens must finally put their fighting skills to the test. As the plot unfolds, a fellow mutant who now calls himself Superfly (Ice Cube) has continued the work of Dr. Baxter, his father, of creating and assembling a family of mutants. But his sinister plan to build a mutant creating machine will bring the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles face to face with the decision of joining their fellow mutants and finding the friendship, family and brotherhood the long for, or saving the dangerous and unaccepting humans.

For starters, the voice actors of the four turtle kids are really terrific, I especially enjoyed Abbey’s Donatello and Brown’s Michelangelo work, but they all have unique and distinctive characteristics that not only give them real depth, but individuality. But voice acting aside, the screenplay really gives us the sense of who these youngsters are, that they are just four kids that have wants and desires like any others, the need to be accepted by their peers, hang out, play on their phones, go to school like every other kid, Leonardo even wants a girlfriend. But in several scenes, as the four will frequently talk over each other, with one liners and pop culture quotes flying without number in such rapid succession, the film picks up a kinetic energy and even sometimes a chaotic and hectic quality. This tone perfectly summarizes and fits in with the TV/phone/tablet screen filled, can never ever be bored, ADHD kids of this day and age, which will gravitate to this movie like a moth to a neon colored flame, but may leave a few older audiences a little mentally worn out. The visually stunning animation is really some incredible work, the way it uses light and dark color contrasts as well as non-symmetrical shapes and oblong figures make this film stand out in stark contrast to the more traditional animation we see in most films. The retro 90’s soundtrack and needle drops of songs that most parents will remember, especially a sequence featuring the 4 Non Blondes, panders to the 90’s kids and helps to make this one of the best family friendly films of the summer, it may almost be more entertaining for the parents than their kids. And while this year’s Best Animated Feature race is heating up with a ton of contenders, these Ninja Turtles are easily among my favorites, not just of the animated films I’ve seen this year, but of films of any kind.

SUMMARY - The action, pacing, youthful exuberance and humor all assist in helping the runtime to fly by and make this film highly rewatchable. No, you don’t need to look that word up to see if it exists. With so much of the film truly embracing the film’s subtitle word Mayhem, though the new TMNT may not be as great for grandparents taking out the grandkids movie, most parents taking the family out to the movies will have a great time with these Mutants.