"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem" Puts the Fun Back in the Superhero Genre
The newest iteration of the beloved reptiles returns the franchise to its roots while also branching out on its own.
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I have loved the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for as long as I can remember. When I was a kid, I watched all of the films (even, heaven help me, the third one), binged the animated series from the 1980s and 1990s), and collected every action figure I could get my hands on. A few years ago I made the misguided decision to watch Out of the Shadows, and to this day I am scarred by the roid-swollen visages of its Turtles. The fighting foursome have endured quite a lot over the decades, and there have been times of late when I’ve wondered whether the magic has been thoroughly drained from this particular franchise.
It’s thus understandable that I would approach Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem with a bit of trepidation. I’ll admit that I’ve never been Seth Rogen’s biggest fan, and knowing that he was such a dominant force in the film (and that he was going to provide the voice of mutant Rocksteady) made me wonder whether this was going to be a misfire. As it turns out, however, I needn’t have worried so much. From the first moment to the last, Mutant Mayhem manages to strike just the right balance between staying true to the ethos of its predecessors while still being brave enough to set out on its own path.
To begin with, it is just stunning to look at. We seem to be living in a bit of a golden age of animation, at least if one sets aside so much of the bubblegum dreck being pumped out by the likes of DreamWorks and their ilk. As Stephen Thompson of NPR notes, there’s a similarity between the animation in this film and that to be seen in the two Spider-Verse films. It’s impossible not to get swept up in the sheer kinetic energy on offer in Mutant Mayhem, whether it’s when the Turtles are conducting a surreptitious raid of a bodega in order to bring supplies back to the sewers or when they are finally taking down the film’s big bad, a mutant fly named Superfly. This film’s crackling visuality made me feel like a kid again.
What really allows Mutant Mayhem to shine, though, are the vocal performances and its nimble screenplay. The casting of actual teens–Micah Abbey (Donatello), Shamon Brown Jr. (Michelangelo), Nicholas Cantu (Leonardo), and Brady Noon (Raphael)--to play the title characters allows them to fully inhabit their roles, and we come to appreciate, in a way not really seen in this franchise before, the extent to which the Turtles are teens just like any others: yearning for a world outside of their father’s strict ban on engaging with the human world. Jackie Chan is also perfectly cast as Splinter, a father who genuinely loves and cares about his sons and is willing to tell them as much. Ayo Edebiri (riding high on her success on The Bear) is perfect as April O’Neil, imagined here as a teenage journalist yearning to break her first big story and redeem herself in the eyes of her fellow teens.
In terms of the writing, this film wisely doesn’t outstay its welcome. While it takes its sweet time setting things up, I don’t actually see that as a flaw, as it helps us to see how this entry in the franchise is going to depart from its predecessors. Mutant Mayhem hews fairly closely to the mythology we all know and love, and the fundamental traits of the four main characters are intact: Leonardo is the tortured leader; Donatello is the nerd; Raphael is the rebel bad boy; and Michelangelo is the surfer dude. There’s undeniable chemistry between and among them, and I lost count of the number of times that I literally laughed out loud, both at the witty one-liners and at the extended joke regarding Splinter’s fear that the boys will be “milked” by humans in order to learn the secret of their existence.
Like any good Ninja Turtles movie, Mutant Mayhem is also stacked when it comes to the villain department. Ice Cube is pitch-perfect as Superfly, the malevolent product of Baxter Stockman’s nefarious experiments with the ooze. Having been rejected by humanity, he now intends to use his formidable intelligence to flip the hegemony, establishing the mutants as the dominant species. There’s a brief moment when the Turtles almost seem as if they’re going to be drawn in, particularly once Superfly and his cadre take them to a bowling alley and they all engage in some much-needed camaraderie. Like the superheroes they are, however, they ultimately decide that, no matter how attractive his pan-mutant message might be, it doesn’t outweigh the harm he’s going to inflict on the human world they have already grown to love. Ice Cube gives his all to the role, and it’s hard not to feel a bit of sympathy for this outcast, even when he starts to demolish New York City.
Lest you be worried about the fact that Shredder–the Turtles villain par excellence–isn’t a key part of the plot, worry not. As is revealed in the mid-credit sequence, he is very much waiting in the wings, ready to be summoned by Cynthia Utrom, the sinister leader of the corporation determined to learn the secrets of the ooze. Given that a sequel to the film has already been greenlit, it’s safe to say that we’ll meet the Turtles’ most threatening nemesis very soon.
More than anything else, Mutant Mayhem is simply fun. There was never a moment during the entirety of the film that I was bored or felt tempted to look at my watch. Instead, I was transported back to an earlier time in my life, when I could simply sit spellbound while a foursome of pizza-loving, humanoid turtles did battle with a variety of mutants, which range from the well-known (Bebop and Rocksteady) to the more unknown (like Wingnut and Mondo Gecko). This film is proof that even a tried and true property like the Ninja Turtles–and the increasingly-stale superhero genre–can still cast their particular spell. Sometimes all you need in a movie is pleasure, pure and simply, and this one more than delivers.