‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem’: Review

Dir: Jeff Rowe. US. 2023. 100mins

After 33 years and seven tries, those wisecracking heroes in a half-shell finally have a winning big-screen adaptation to their name. Irreverent and action-packed without sacrificing charm or emotional resonance, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle: Mutant Mayhem takes a page from the recent Spider-Verse animated films to bring a hip, youthful energy to a very familiar piece of IP, in the process giving us a story that’s fresh and funny. Produced and co-written by Superbad masterminds Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, the picture celebrates the endearing mutant foursome who bicker and bond like brothers, facing off with a fearsome foe while wrestling with their adolescent anxieties. The Turtles remain lovably dorky, but they’ve never been part of a film this cool.

The Turtles remain lovably dorky, but they’ve never been part of a film this cool

Mutant Mayhem hits UK cinemas on July 31, before opening in the US on August 2. The first TMNT picture, the hit live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, debuted in 1990, spawning two sequels. (There was an animated film in 2007 and then two more live-action pictures, with 2014’s Michael Bay-produced Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles grossing nearly $500 million worldwide.) Referencing Godzilla, The Dark Knight, X-Men and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Mutant Mayhem should cater to the same crowds that loved Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse and Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse, with strong reviews and solid word-of-mouth bolstering commercial prospects. 

Hiding in the New York sewer with their protective rat mentor Splinter (voiced poignantly by Jackie Chan), sensitive Leonardo (Nicolas Cantu), kindly Michelangelo (Shamon Brown Jr.), nerdy Donatello (Micah Abbey) and hotheaded Raphael (Brady Noon) long to interact with the outside world, but have been warned by Splinter that they will frighten humans, who will want to study or kill them. But these teenage turtles, who were transformed into sentient, standing-upright creatures (alongside Splinter) thanks to a strange ooze, want to prove their heroism, teaming with high-school journalist April O’Neil (Ayo Edebiri) to hunt down a mutant bug villain named Superfly (Ice Cube), who has a monstrous plan to destroy humanity.

Director Jeff Rowe (who served as co-director on The Mitchells Vs. The Machines) adopts a very clever visual strategy for Mutant Mayhem. The animation is gritty but also playful, mimicking the passionate hand-drawn sketches one would see in a teenager’s notebook as she scribbled her favourite characters on the page. Backgrounds are sometimes incompletely rendered — we see squiggles instead of fully-coloured-in objects — but the Turtles and the supporting players are always vibrant; although even here the animation has an unpolished quality that gives the proceedings a likeable edginess. 

The characters, created by comic-book artists Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman in 1984, are well-suited for our superhero era, but the screenplay — credited to five writers — emphasises their insecurities over their crime-fighting prowess, which will slowly develop over the course of the film. Mutant Mayhem is the umpteenth TMNT picture that explains the Turtles’ origins but, like the rest of the story, the breezy flashback sequence is propelled forward by Greg Levitan’s dynamic editing and a dazzling score from Oscar-winners Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, who deliver pulse-pounding electronic music for fight scenes and then shift toward more melancholy keyboard melodies during quieter moments. The jokes fly fast and furious — the Turtles love to riff off one another when they’re not trading put-downs — but Mutant Mayhem doesn’t descend into snideness, the filmmakers never losing a sense of how much these mutants love one another.

That sincerity is also evident in the picture’s treatment of the Turtles’ loneliness. Earlier TMNT films focused on the quips and martial-arts action and, while Mutant Mayhem features plenty of both, Rowe (and co-director Kyler Spears) take a special interest in how the Turtles react to being outcasts. Looking wistfully at human teens who get to hang out in New York during the summertime, catching an outdoor movie or holding hands, Leonardo and his brothers would do anything to feel like they belong — which is ironic since the one human they befriend, April (Ayo Edebiri), is also an outsider because of her awkward demeanour and an embarrassing public incident she cannot live down. As hilariously snarky as Mutant Mayhem can be — and as gripping as the action scenes are — the film is guided by a sweetness that never tips over into sentimentality. 

The voice cast is uniformly superb: Ice Cube tears into Superfly’s swaggering menace, while the four Turtle actors adeptly convey their indelible characters’ trademark qualities. The soundtrack boasts several hip-hop classics and, even when the film’s breakneck pace loses momentum, the striking visuals remain a treat. For decades, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have returned to multiplexes, but never before has their youthful uncertainty been so compelling, adorable and insightfully depicted. The exceedingly ingratiating Mutant Mayhem is an apt tribute to characters who have always just wanted to be accepted.