Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem: Interesting Aesthetic With A Weak Story

In recent years, the idea of what a family movie is has changed in significant ways. Viewers who go to see a family film now can usually expect it to be closer to what people considered a “four quadrant” movie in the past, where there was something for everyone to enjoy regardless of gender or age group. This year, movies like The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Elemental, and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (and even the streaming movie Nimona) have all been accessible regardless of whether a viewer has a long history with the franchise in question or wandered into the theater off the street without knowing what the movie was about. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem eschews this in favor of a movie that is really only designed for diehard fans of the pop culture icons with a narrative and character work that leaves a lot to be desired.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem follows Raphael, Leonardo, Donatello, and Michaelangelo as they team up with April O’Neil to try and take down a villainous mutant named Superfly who wants to turn the entire world into mutants and kill all the humans. The star-studded cast includes Seth Rogan, Jackie Chan, Paul Rudd, Ayo Edebiri, John Cena, Ice Cube, and Giancarlo Esposito.

The best part of the movie, as has been the case with a lot of animated movies in recent years, is the inventive visual style and aesthetic. Visually, the film is beautiful as it is designed to look like sketches in a notebook with a ton of contrasting bright neon colors that work well when juxtaposed with the dark environments of New York City. A lot of the time, the score from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross works very well with the film, however, there are times when the score is replaced with licensed music that can feel a little forced.

The issue comes from the narrative and character work for what is largely an origin story for four comic book heroes. The four heroes at the center of the plot do not have a character arc and are largely static. Where they are at the beginning of the movie is where they are at the end which could be fine if the intent is to have a character that aggressively does not want to change. It’s also not as if the characters do not want to have an arc, it just doesn’t happen. Compound this with a movie that somewhat falls into the Raiders of the Lost Arc problem (namely that the protagonist is superfluous to the plot and without them, the plot would in all likelihood happen functionally the same without them. If the turtles are not in the movie, the narrative would likely all happen the same based on how all the character’s motivations are defined.

On top of this, around 60 percent of the dialogue is some kind of pop culture reference or product placement. It is so overt and over the top that it makes movies like Haunted Mansion last week or Man of Steel or Power Rangers look subtle. It also falls into the pitfall of a movie that is very obviously an adult trying to write dialogue for a child and it does not feel organic in the slightest. It makes most lines of dialogue feel like they were AI-generated examples of teenagers based entirely on how people talk on social media.

The problem comes in with how the movie should be recommended for viewing. Obviously if one is a fan of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, this is a must-watch movie. That said, if someone is looking for a family movie to watch in a theater to get two hours out of the summer heat, maybe check out Princess Mononoke which is rerunning in theaters this weekend, or Elemental which is still playing at the AMC in Stony Brook. This is a solid movie to wait to watch until it hits Paramount+ unless they are bringing nostalgia or fandom to it.

Final Rating: 7/10