 |
| Images courtesy Paramount/Nickelodeon |
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have got to be one of the most enduring, always-loved superhero teams to exist outside of Marvel and DC. I grew up with the original Turtles cartoon and the original live-action movie (which is still incredible), and at no point in my life since then has there NOT been some sort of relatively new TMNT media. Rebooted cartoon series, multiple timelines of reboot films, loads of great video games, and the comics of course. And yet they seem more or less immune to the superhero reboot fatigue that other franchises seem to suffer from. No matter how recently they were last on our screens in a previous iteration, people just cannot get enough of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - I certainly can't. And professional elder-millennial nerd Seth Rogan (producer, first-billed writer, and co-star here), co-directors Jeff Rowe and Kyler Spears, and their collaborators perfectly understand why. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem captures everything that we love about the iconic characters - their very distinct, memorable, and colorful personalities, their trademark blend of comedy and action, the larger-than-life art design, the wild creatures, and the comic-book-martial-arts fighting style - and yet it wraps it up in a package that feels like a very unique, fresh, disarmingly sincere telling of the story. It is both a quite different Ninja Turtles than we've seen before, and a perfect rendition of what we've always loved about the series. Plus, the art design and music are absolutely phenomenal.
The story that Rogan's writing team is telling is a pretty different angle than we're used to: rather than catching up with the Turtles as battle-ready ninjas who seem like older teens, this is basically "Ninja Turtles: Year One." The turtles are awkward and not particularly mature young teenagers who have never had a fight, and who have never even considered the possibility of doing anything very heroic. Their personalities are exactly the familiar ones we know and love - Leonardo is the (awkward) leader, Donatello is the tech-savvy one, Raph is the hothead, and Mikey is the goofball - but what is unique about this story is that we don't meet them first and foremost as ninjas, we meet them first and foremost as teenagers. And they're gen-Z teenagers, very plugged in online - which means that they are saturated with the images and the culture of real-life teenagers and the things they do and like, but they are seeing all of that from the outside in, as things they know they can never have because they're sewer-dwelling turtle mutants.
This is the first time that we've seen the turtles have this much ennui and existential angst thinking about the normal lives they wish they could have, and it adds some welcome emotional sincerity to the film, and explores a side of the characters we don't usually get to see. Which is not to say that it's overly serious: it is absolutely first and foremost a comedy, and the young turtles are major goofballs as much as ever. It's just comedy underpinned by surprisingly sincere emotion. The movie directly shouts out John Hughes at one point, and that is exactly the kind of goofy comedy with emotional sincerity that Rogan and company are going for. This really is Ninja Turtles as a teen movie. This time around April O'Neil is a teenager too: an aspiring journalist working for her high school paper, who is just the kind of normal kid they want to be (she's also Black in this version, which I'm sure racist right-wing trolls will lose their minds over, calling this "woke Ninja Turtles" or whatever, but most people I think will love how all-around diverse this version of the story is), and together they launch a plan to make themselves look to the world like heroes, so they will be accepted and not be outcasts anymore. Unfortunately this plan brings them into conflict with a gang of mutants (including a ton of iconic and beloved TMNT villains from over the years), lead by Ice Cube's mutant criminal mastermind Superfly, and the turtles have to step up and become mutant ninja heroes after all.
Choosing to base the plot around a rogue's gallery of classic mutant villains instead of just doing Shredder and the Foot Clan yet again was an inspired choice. Not only does it feel fresh and different, and not only does it set up some wild mutant action scenes, but it utilizes to the fullest the wonderful animated aesthetic that the team developed for the film. This movie looks simply spectacular. Yes, many have pointed out that it uses the same 15fps look made popular again by Into The Spiderverse, but it does not crib from the actual aesthetic of that film; Mutant Mayhem has a very cool look all its own. The characters are modeled to look like claymation, right down to them all having the textures of sculpted wet clay figures. The backgrounds, on the other hand, look like sketchbook illustrations done in colored pencil and marker, complete with visible brushstrokes. The two mesh together to create a very cool, very colorful and vibrant aesthetic which is unique even during this renaissance of cool animation styles. It also gives the CGI film the look of being handmade, which (as with Spiderverse) helps it to feel less like part of the corporate franchise machine and more like a lovingly crafted return to the world of Ninja Turtles by people who genuinely care about it - which definitely matches the vibe of Rogan and company's enthusiastically nerdy script.
The cast bringing the large rogue's gallery of mutants to life is excellent. Loads of movie stars, great character actors, and musicians popping up as supporting characters, some immediately recognizable, and others in "hey, who was that?" cheeky vocal cameos. I'm not going to spoil the fun for those who love identifying voice cameos by listing the supporting cast here, but it's great. Leading the main cast is The Bear's Ayo Edebiri as April, Ice Cube as Superfly, Maya Rudolph as the film's secondary antagonist, a TCRI mad scientist, Jackie Chan as Master Splinter, and in a very cool and effective casting choice, four actual teenagers as the turtles. The kids who play the turtles knock it out of the park, replacing the more clearly-voiced-by-adults comic snark of past iterations with performances that, both in the funny and the sincere moments, feel very genuine to the awkward and uncertain teen experience the four are living. Edebiri as excellent as April, standing out from previous iterations with a pretty different take on the character, as an unsure but ambitious teenager rather than an intrepid reporter, that really works. Ice Cube and Rudolph both have a ton of fun chewing the scenery as our main baddies. The performance that I had been most curious about going in was Jackie Chan as Splinter. Chan is of course a genius comic actor - one of the finest comic actors of our time, I would argue - but the key to the brilliance of his acting is his physicality, with his background in dance and martial arts, and his Harold Lloyd/Buster Keaton style of stunt-driven physical comedy. I was very curious how he would do with a strictly vocal performance, without being able to use that physicality. He does quite a good job! He clearly isn't as experienced with voice acting as others on the cast, and is pretty much just giving the performance of Jackie Chan, but as a rat. But his disarmingly funny, instantly likable persona comes through wonderfully, he provides a few genuinely hilarious moments, and makes a very funny and charming Splinter.
The other key element tying the film together is the soundtrack and score, both of which are excellent. The movie uses licensed songs very well in several key sequences, and it also boasts one of the coolest movie scores I've heard lately, from none other than Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. The always-excellent Reznor/Ross duo give us a very electronic, heavily synth-driven score which ties together the identity of Ninja Turtles as both a modern franchise and a vintage 80s/90s one. This emphasis on heavy synth parts also makes it one of their scores which sounds the most like a Nine Inch Nails record - specifically the more electronic side of Nine Inch Nails as found on albums like With Teeth, or the excellent single Sh*t Mirror off of their most recent EP, Bad Witch (that song in particular I thought about several times during the film - and not just because of its very appropriate "mutation feels alright" chorus). Fans of NIN and Reznor and Ross's score work will love this movie on the strength of the music alone.
I have a certain amount of concern that some people might not love this movie as much as they would have a few months ago, since it is entering theaters in the same blockbuster season as both Spiderverse and Barbie: two very smartly postmodern films which dissect their genres and forms in very thought-provoking ways while also excelling at them. This film does not go for the postmodern genre dissection angle; instead it chooses to focus on character, and on taking a different sort of coming-of-age approach to the TMNT origin story. It does it very very well, and if you are here for a great Ninja Turtles movie, it absolutely delivers. I am just a little concerned that in this age of brilliantly-executed postmodern deconstructions of the blockbuster, some viewers might not get as excited for a non-postmodern, classic superhero narrative anymore; might think of it as a pre-Spiderverse, pre-Barbie narrative approach that isn't where their heads are at this summer. This is not a criticism of the film; I do not think it needed to go postmodern, and I think that its loving and thoughtful approach to telling a more character-motivated Ninja Turtles story was the right one. It's just a matter of potentially bad timing for any film to come out against the genre-changing postmodern double-header Spiderverse and Barbie.
I really hope that people go see Mutant Mayhem, and embrace it for the great take on the material that it is, and that it doesn't end up getting lost in the Barbenheimer excitement, the way that Hellboy II got lost in the shadow of The Dark Knight. It provides a pretty unique, character-driven-teen-movie take on the Turtles, while also delivering all the great things we know and love about the franchise. It has phenomenal art design, excellent animation, and that Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross score is simply outstanding. The trailers may have made it look more than a bit like "Spiderverse, but make it Turtles," but the film itself is very much its own thing, with different narrative and artistic priorities. Whether you're a dedicated TMNT fan like myself, or anyone else who enjoys a good animated superhero action/comedy, Mutant Mayhem delivers. Cowabunga!
Score:
.png)
- Christopher S. Jordan
Share this review!