Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (2023)
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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem Movie Review
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is a 2023 animated superhero film directed by Jeff Rowe. It is the first truly good TMNT movie that we’ve gotten so far.
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“We gotta get you some therapy!“
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After years of being sheltered from the human world, the Turtle brothers set out to win the hearts of New Yorkers and be accepted as normal teenagers through heroic acts. Their new friend April O’Neil helps them take on a mysterious crime syndicate, but they soon get in over their heads when an army of mutants is unleashed upon them. The plot behind this movie is rather simple and lacking the sophistication necessary for it to appeal to adult viewers. It’s serviceable, but never particularly memorable.
The whole movie serves its teenage audience while not being particularly suitable either for adults or for children. On the one hand, this led to a rather limited appeal, but on the other hand, these turtles are teenagers after all, so it was only fitting to portray them as such. In fact, this is the first time that they sounded like teenagers and acted like them. The voice acting was excellent as they hired actual child and teenage actors, which made a huge difference.
The humor is excellent. It is the best reason to see this film along with its animation, but more on that later. There is a lot of bro banter here that was at times annoying, but for the most part hilarious and entirely believable for this demographic. Ice Cube was particularly funny as the movie’s big baddie. The pop culture references were overwhelming, but at least most of the turtles’ banter was genuinely endearing and amusing.
Mutant Mayhem was so obviously influenced by ‘Spider-Verse’ in its score, animation and overall style and approach for better and for worse. The animation is absolutely incredible. Not only was it wholly artistic, but also colorful, polished and very old-fashioned and unique in character designs. This TMNT world is actually different in its grotesqueness and evident horror-infused elements. Every character – mutant and human alike – was ugly and gross to a degree, which worked as it fitted this world so well. This is the kind of authentic CGI animation that I can get behind and let’s hope that this trend continues.
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There is one caveat to this audio-visual similarity to the aforementioned Spider-Man movie and that is the score, which is as aggressively bad and limited in appeal as you can get. So much of it consists of horrendous hip-hop music that is overloud and fueled by sound effects that quickly got on my nerves how screeching and off-putting they were. I do realize that this score is meant to appeal to the intended teenage demographic, but as an adult it frustrated me more than anything else.
The characterization in Mutant Mayhem is surprisingly strong. The turtles all got defining personalities and every single one of them was sweet and/or fun. Donatello is the most likable of the bunch while Ralph is the coolest. Michelangelo is the funniest and Leonardo trying to be a leader so hard led to so many hilarious moments where his brothers made fun of him.
I did not like this version of April O’Neil at all. I don’t mind that her ethnicity was changed from white to black, but her personality was annoying and the puking scenes were painfully unfunny. Rocksteady and Bebop were a bit too sidelined and Shredder was just hinted at in the final scene, but Superfly made for a delightfully over-the-top and funny, but competent villain.
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The dialogue could be quite good here, but the action sequences were overwhelming, hectic and loud, though a couple of the fights were quite well executed. The emphasis on family and the turtles wanting to be in the human world was quite welcome with Splinter being wonderfully realized in the most fatherly role to date yet.
Mutant Mayhem is a surprisingly strong TMNT movie that has its issues, but it was mostly a lot of fun. The Spider-Verse influence was evident here – the colorful, artistic animation style was delightful while the aggressive hip-hop music was off-putting. The film is limited in appeal for better and for worse as it was intended for its teenage demographic first and foremost, but the humor is actually quite strong and the characterization is excellent. The action was overwhelming and the story slight, but the darker tone and more grotesque character designs made for a rather unique approach. Overall, it’s such a good flick that I wouldn’t mind if it were to start an entire franchise.
My Rating – 4
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