Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem Review: A Turtle-Y Entertaining Animated Adventure

"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem" is a Nickelodeon movie made by people who remember the era when the Nickelodeon brand meant something. The millennial screenwriters — director Jeff Rowe, producers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, and the "Detective Pikachu" duo of Dan Hernandez and Benji Samit — have made a film that evokes the best sensibilities of '90s and early 2000s Nick programming. It's speaking to kids without talking down to them. It's weird and gross and ugly in a way that's still extremely appealing. There's just enough heart and relatability to have feel-good moments without becoming a sentimental Disney movie. Green slime is involved (the turtles prefer to use the word "ooze," but you get the picture).

It's also very much a movie made by people who saw "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse." To be clear, we're not saying every hyper-stylized 2.5D CG animated film is just copying "Spider-Verse." Rowe previously co-directed "The Mitchells vs. The Machines," my personal favorite example of this current stylistic trend, and his work on "Mutant Mayhem" has its own distinct aesthetic, closer to the rough edges of Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird's underground comix source material compared to the Marvel polish of "Spider-Verse." Yet even with these distinctions, there are nonetheless many moments in the movie where you'll think "That looks like 'Spider-Verse.'" And there are even more moments where you'll think "That sounds like 'Spider-Verse'" — Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross' score often sounds really similar to Daniel Pemberton's "Spider-Verse" music.

Despite its stylistic similarities, "Mutant Mayhem" isn't here to elevate its goofy intellectual property to high art in the way the "Spider-Verse" movies have. Nor is it content to operate on pure nostalgia in the manner of "The Super Mario Bros. Movie." It settles for the reasonable middle ground: an enjoyable hour and a half with some great action and just enough cleverness to keep its not-particularly-original story engaging.

Leonardo (Nicolas Cantu), Donatello (Micah Abbey), Raphael (Brady Noon), and Michelangelo (Shamon Brown Jr.) just want to be able to go to school and do things normal human teenagers get to do. To even interact with humans, however, goes against the rules of their father, Splinter (Jackie Chan), who fears the violence humans will commit against mutants and has trained his adopted turtle sons in ninjitsu to defend themselves. The turtles break their dad's rules and befriend April O'Neil (Ayo Edobiri), a teen reporter who sees the turtles as the perfect story to gain recognition after enduring a brutal embarrassment. Encouraged by April, the turtles plot to take down a crime syndicate run by the mysterious Superfly (Ice Cube) in hopes of gaining humanity's acceptance via heroic deeds.

Superfly, of course, is a giant mutant fly with a crew of other mutants on his side. Like Splinter, Superfly has faced humanity's violence, but rather than hiding, he now seeks revenge. Essentially, Superfly vs. the Ninja Turtles becomes a Magneto vs. Professor X conflict, but simplified way, way down to the point any actually meaningful parallels to real-world discrimination are lost. Some kids might relate to the turtles in feeling like outsiders, but they're not going to find a particularly meaningful story out of that sense of outsider-ness here the way they would in "Nimona."

Where the plot is utterly standard, "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem" does a much better job with characterization and casting. Having the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles be voiced by actual teenagers for the first time in the franchise's history is a stroke of brilliance. Their brotherly teasing and distinctive personality quirks ring authentic and humorous. Superfly's mutant gang makes for an entertaining ensemble as well. The totally radical Mondo Gecko (Paul Rudd, jokingly given an "introducing" credit) and always-singing Ray Fillet (Post Malone) are sure to be audience favorites, and as a "What We Do in the Shadows" fan, I also quite enjoyed hearing Natasia Demetriou as the mutant bat Wingnut.

The best parts of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem" are easily the action scenes. It's here where the animation by Mikros Animation and Cinesite is at its most stunning. From a montage seamlessly cutting between the four brothers in parallel hallway fights to a giant monster attack that directly references both "Godzilla" and "Attack on Titan," these sequences are more evidence that animation is the ideal medium for making superhero action as exciting as possible.

On the topic of pop culture references: There are a lot of them in the movie, and I'm not really considering that a positive or a negative but just a neutral factor significant enough to be worth noting. You could arguably consider some of the references to be pandering (either to kids or millennials, on a case-by-case basis), and a lot of them could definitely be considered product placement (especially regarding other Nickelodeon properties and brand logos). On the other hand, making constant pop culture references is realistic to the way a lot of teenagers talk, and many of these references are funny. I expect people's feelings will vary on this aspect of the film.

"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem" is much better than you might expect a "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" movie to be, though it never reaches the levels of greatness you might hope to see from a post-"Spider-Verse" animated action-comedy. It's not going to be winning any awards aside from maybe a Kids Choice Award, but it's a breezy good time that flies by and looks awesome. Nickelodeon and Paramount have already announced a spin-off TV series and a movie sequel, so audiences can expect to enjoy much more of these turtles in the coming years.

"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem" opens in theaters on August 2.

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 reviewed here wouldn't exist.