This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movie being covered here wouldn’t exist.
It seems as though that animated films are hitting a sort of renaissance era. Between the marvelous Spider-Verse films, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish and now Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, animation has taken a new direction for the better. And honestly, it serves the story well. Hopefully we begin to see more and more studios opting to move away from hyper-realistic animation styles that mimic real life as closely as possible and turn to more avant-garde styles that look amazing on screen and perform well with audiences.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem follows the origin story of our favorite humanoid turtles named after classical artists: Leonardo, Michaelangelo, Rafael and Donatello, as well as their mentor/father figure Splinter the rat. After an accident involving strange green ooze turns these creatures into mutant humanoids, they try to live their lives as normally as possible while avoiding humans because “they hate you and they’ll milk you”. When a mysterious evil casts upon the city, the turtles, who are fascinated by human life, decide to take it on themselves, with the help of human April O’Neill, in order to get society to like them.
As mentioned at the top of this review, the animation style here is so unique and so gorgeous. It works as a faux-hand drawn style that really captivated me right from the start. It felt like a breath of fresh air, and it allowed for some really interesting creative choices in background and character design. Notably, all of New York looks so gross. It’s dirty, the design of the humans is intentionally ugly, and it works so well when you realize you’re seeing it from the turtles’ point of view. They’ve been taught how scary the human world is and we see that on screen.
Beyond the great style though, the filmmakers also used the animation to provide some really cool action sequences that really surprised me for a kid’s movie. With the exception of the first superfly fight sequence, which was really rather lackluster, I was very impressed.
The voice acting in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem also doesn’t disappoint. Micah Abbey, Shamon Brown Jr., Nicolas Cantu and Brady Noon all do great jobs as the titular ninja turtles. They have a clear chemistry that feels super believable and works on screen. The film hinges on that chemistry and it works. Couple that with strong supporting performances from the likes of Jackie Chan and Ice Cube and I was quite impressed throughout my viewing.
Unfortunately, the film also serves as an obvious origin story to a larger body of work, and while it makes me excited for future films, it really drags this one down. The film spends far too much time on the background of each character, so much so that it becomes hard to watch at points. The main conflict really doesn’t arrive until almost 45 minutes into the film. While it’s important to give context to the characters, it really just felt like a lot. Couple that with the stereotypical origin story beats where the main characters have to learn and hone their new skills and it makes for a tough first half at points. However, once we move past this and head into the second half, the film improves greatly.
Final Thoughts
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem provides a fun origin story for what is obviously going to be a larger universe with even more films to come. However, it gets dragged down by the necessity of its own story at points. Yet, that is still not enough to truly damage the film, as the great voice acting, and really unique animation style captivated me more than it should have. This is a great family film, and beyond that a fun movie for anyone who enjoys world class animation.
