Film Review - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (2023)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is the newest Ninja Turtles film only this time it is animated and is co-written by Seth Rogen who also voices Bebop the Mutant (Rocksteady is voiced by John Cena), this story sees the Turtles wanting to be accepted by the human world despite their father Splinter (Jackie Chan) not wanting them to go there but when the villainous Superfly (Ice Cube) plans to mutate the animals of the world so he can take it over its up to the Turtles and their only human friend April O’Neill (Ayo Edibiri) to stop them.

Mutant Mayhem is good fun and shows that the Ninja Turtles are best suited to the world of animation instead of live action where those films were very hit and miss either because of the storytelling or the Turtles themselves not looking that great in the real world but here animation suits them well and I had a smile on my face for most of the running time.

As for that animation well it is good and it certainly has a unique style to it but it also at times feels like an imitation of the animation styles you see in the Spider-Man: Spider-Verse movies and those movies use this style better as it feels more polished as oppose to sketch book which happens here and is a little noticeable at times.

Also the Turtles themselves are a good unit here and don’t have a lot of the darker tones the live action films sometimes wrote them to have, I do miss the group of the early 1990s animated series but these are a good second and the voice actors Nicholas Cantu, Micah Abbey, Brady Noon and Shamon Brown Jr work well together although Jackie Chan as Splinter is inspired casting but sadly isn’t given the martial arts backstory the original animated series gave him and he feels wasted as the typical concerned dad.

And here is where I will delve into my biggest issue with this movie and that is its storytelling, don’t get me wrong it isn’t awful but its also another origin story and it’s not that interesting anymore, if your going to do this just do it like Tim Burton’s first Batman movie in 1989 did where the Turtles are already established as heroes and then do a brief backstory explainer later in the film and also it does a lot of the acceptance ideas that I didn’t find to be all that interesting especially in this time where were trying to celebrate difference in people a lot more than we used to.

And lastly as for the villains, their okay but nothing overly special though Ice Cube is pretty good as Superfly and the other mutants are fun to watch as well.

And so that was TMNT: Mutant Mayhem and it’s a good time and I enjoyed myself enough that I feel its worth watching, 3 out of 5.