I can honestly say that there hasn’t been a moment in my career as a film critic in which a movie chronicling the misadventures of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has not existed—my very first screening of a film in a reasonably professional capacity happened to be the original 1990 film, a showing attended only by myself, Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel—and to this day, their appeal continues to elude me to some extent. Oh, I have seen all the various sequels and reboots that have emerged over the years and I know enough about them that I could probably name all four of them when asked (though the last time this occurred, I found myself blanking on Raphael) but I remain somewhat clueless beyond that—while I could easily name all the participants, including their secret identities, in Taylor Swift’s “Bad Blood” video, I could not identify which one was Michelangelo, Donatello, Leonardo or Raphael if you put a gun to my head. I know that they are beloved figures in the pop cultural firmament through their appearances on film, television, comic books and video games over the last few decades but whatever the appeal about them is, I have thus far failed to connect with it.
In other words, I suppose I am not exactly the target audience for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, the latest attempt to jump-start the franchise following the original three films, an animated take and a couple of Michael Bay-produced live-action brawls that inexplicably included the likes of Megan Fox and Tyler Perry in the mix. I also confess that I wasn’t exactly filled with enthusiasm to begin with and even that had been further deflated when the girl at the concession stand asked if I was going to see Oppenheimer and I confessed what I was actually there to see. And yet, the resulting film is. . .passable, I suppose. Oh, it isn’t particularly good for any number of reasons and both the appeal and the identities of the title characters continue to elude me. However, it does have a few things going for it that make it arguably the best of the franchise (or at least the best since the first film) and a reasonably painless watch for non-fans like me.
After a quick recap of how the turtles came to be—a wizened old rat finds a quartet of baby turtles splashing around in radioactive ooze that mutates in various ways—the film cuts to 15 years later, where the four—Michelangelo (Sharon Brown Jr.), Leonardo (Nicholas Cantù), Donatello (Micah Abbey) and Raphael (Brady Noon)—are still living in the sewers with their beloved adoptive father, Splinter (Jackie Chan) but are all chafing to experience the real world despite Splinter’s admonitions of what could happen at the hand of people whom do not understand them. (Their yearnings include an outdoor screening of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, a film that could rightly put them all off any interest in associating with humans, but never mind.) Eventually, they meet up with April O’Neil (Ayo Edebiri), a teen girl with the ambition (if not the digestive system) to be a reporter who is hot on the trail of a story about a mysterious criminal known only as Superfly (ice Cube) who has been staging audacious robberies throughout the city. As it turns out, Superfly comes exactly as advertised—he is a fly who has been mutated by the same ooze as the turtles and plans, with the aid of his various bizarro henchthings, to set forth a plan to similarly mutate all the animals on Earth—and our heroes are forced to emerge from the sewer and do battle in the hopes of saving the world.
The most immediately striking thing about TMNT: Mutant Mayhem is the visual style employed by director Jeff Rowe, who previously co-wrote and co-directed the delightful The Mitchells and the Machines, this time around. Like the Spider-Verse films, the film employs a combination of 2D and 3D animation styles that nicely evokes the look and style of comic books that sets it apart from the other films in the franchise. I also liked the vocal casting of the central characters—for once, the title characters have all been voiced by actual teenagers and they give a fresh spin to the material that allows you to believe, if only for a little bit, that you are hearing the actual characters and not just some bored actors in a recording school going through their lines with all the conviction of Krusty the Clown. I also liked the voice performance from Jackie Chan as Splinter—he has contributed his vocal talents to a number of films in recent years (not even he can continue to stunts of the sort that made him famous forever) and this is his best work in that regard by far.
These elements do help make the film more enjoyable than most of its predecessors but they don’t quite get it to the point of becoming a good movie. Most of the problem stems from the screenplay penned by Rowe, Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg and others, which contains plenty of quips and bits of goofiness for the supporting cast—which includes vocal contributions from Rogen, Maya Rudolph, Rose Byrne, Paul Rudd, Giancarlo Esposito and John Cena—to have fun with and some of them are indeed amusing. The trouble is that the story itself is not particularly compelling or innovative—and comes across as especially archaic in comparison to the bold visual stylings on display—and becomes a real drag on the proceedings as it plods along towards its perfunctory climax. Additionally, while the characterizations of the Turtles are a little fuller than in the past, there is still precious little on display that helps those not already particularly well-versed in Turtleology to differentiate them from each other.
My guess is that if you are a long-standing fan of the Turtles or are merely looking for a film to take the kids to during the dog days of August, Mutant Mayhem will fit the bill—it moves quickly, it looks good and it does inspire a few laughs here and there. However, coming on the heels of the likes of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and Barbie—two films that showed incredible ambition regarding animated action films and movies based on toy properties—the cliched screenplay can’t help but come across as inadequate by comparison. That said, while I cannot actually recommend watching it—hell, I could barely remember what happened in it less than a half-hour after watching it—I will admit that it is the first time in more than 30 years that I have emerged from a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles screening feeling vaguely optimistic about the potential of a sequel, provided that such a film keeps the stuff that worked here and invests a little more time and energy into a better script.