Riot’s Reviews: TMNT Mutant Mayhem
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are arguably one of the most prolific comic book IPs in existence. This is made more impressive by the fact that the original publishing only came out in 1984 in comparison to mainstays like Superman and Batman that came out in the 1930’s. Some iteration of the turtles has consistently existed during the course of the last forty years, their appearance and backstory shifting for each new generation of children ready to fall in love with them. Even I, having grown up with the original cartoon T.V. series, only kept up with the movies since, which certainly was bound to sway my opinion of Seth Rogan, Evan Goldberg, and Jeff Rowe’s latest portrayal of the heroes in a half-shell if only because of how much time has passed. So many years later, would Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhemhave me screaming, “Cowabunga dudes”?!
The short answer is, no. No it didn’t. The long answer is far more complicated though. I’m not one to shy away from my own shortcomings, which forces me to acknowledge that generationally, I’m likely getting left behind, especially in regards to the “comedy” elements of the film. This leaves me to beg the question how a multitude of reviewers (many that are significantly older than I am) are singing such high praises of this movie. When I stop to consider that the last TMNTI legitimately enjoyed was the titular 2007 story, I am certainly the odd man out on this one. All of that is beside the point, which is that Mutant Mayhem is absolutely saturated to death with Gen Z humor/references. So much so that it almost never stops. Again, I’m forced to acknowledge that this is the turtles for the new generation, since Paramount Pictures absolutely shanked their attempts in 2014 and 2016. But if their intention was to leave an older generation behind, I’d argue they succeeded.
There are a number of things that really hurt Mutant Mayhem as I saw it. Primarily, storytelling elements were shaved too dramatically in favor of excessively drawn out dialogue from the turtles. Their banter, which mostly amounted to long strings of the Gen Z references I mentioned before, was more grating than humorous and could have been more refined than just a group of teenagers loudly speaking over one another. The elements that individualized the turtles also got significantly scaled back to the point that the only thing distinguishing them was their voices and the color of their bandanas. It became so much of an after-thought, that when it became relevant at the end, it was too late to be anything meaningful. The canon of the turtles was messed with to a point that I couldn’t get behind, particularly reducing their ninja training down to a 1980’s workout video. And the final confrontation of the story went so far off the rails it was impossible to stay invested.
The voice acting was all over the map and I was surprised to find that the four teenagers helming the turtles (Micah Abbey, Shamon Brown Jr., Nicolas Cantu, and Brady Noon) turned in the best performances of all. I am a massive Jackie Chan (Splinter) fan, but I can’t say his voice is necessarily what transfers well (likely why he wasn’t the lead of his T.V. show the Jackie Chan Adventures, which I loved). But I also wasn’t especially fond of Ice Cube (Superfly), Maya Rudolph (Cynthia Ultrom), and Ayo Edibiri (April O’Neil). There’s others I would mention as well, but they weren’t prominently featured so there’s not really any point. I was actually most disappointed by the animation, as they took something beautiful from the stylings of the Sipder-Verse and watered it down to crayon scratchings and human characters designed to look worse than the villainous mutants. Finally, much like being forced to see Indy in his boxers, I wasn’t very fond of watching Splinter tongue down Scumbug, but that’s just me.
Even after all the negatives I have to offer, I can see why audiences today would be able to enjoy this film. Mutant Mayhem has some markings of creators that love the original content and it brings out “old school” references in spades, something I was obviously on board for. They accomplished this in multiple ways: the white-out eyes of the original comics, an excellent Vanilla Ice track, and quite literally a slew of traditional villains that seemed lost to time. The humor, completely lost on me, is something that will certainly land with a different audience. And whether or not I enjoyed the designs of the characters doesn’t necessarily mean they weren’t interesting in their own right. Rogan and his friends have at the very least laid the groundwork that could make this group of pizza-loving heroes into a long running franchise. The popular opinion so far says this is a must-see movie. I just personally couldn’t find the reasons as to why.
Riot’s Rating: 6/10: This seems to be another one of those “if you’ve seen them all so far, you might as well” stories. This one wasn’t my cup of tea. I am, as always, open to arguments about why I’m wrong.
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