GoCorral

I saw the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie with my four year-old daughter and some of her friends. She had became obsessed with the Ninja Turtles because of advertising. I guess marketing works sometimes! To get ready for the event she got a new Ninja Turtles dress featuring Donatello on the front, on the belt, and on the hood. The dress was very popular with the theater staff.

My daughter loved the movie despite it being, “a little scary sometimes.” If you’ve seen other TMNT material its pretty similar in mature content. No sexual content and cartoon violence without any blood even though Leonardo is constantly hitting people with swords. My daughter didn’t have any problems watching it, but mileage may vary for different four year-olds.

The four turtles are the same as ever. Honorable Leo, Brash Raph, Nerdy Donny, and Funny Mikey. My favorite is Mikey and my daughter’s is Leo. They have lived their lives hidden from humans in New York’s sewers with their adopted rat father, Master Splinter. The turtle teens want to have normal lives among the humans but Splinter refuses to let them because they are monsters who would be attacked on sight by people.

The turtles go to the surface to steal groceries with their ninja skills. On these grocery trips they also sneak around to see movies or go to concerts. Their dream is distilled into a wish to go to high school just like in the high school rom-coms they’ve seen.

The turtles get their chance when they accidentally meet April. She still has her yellow jacket, but unlike her previous incarnations April is now a teenager. Her journalism is for the school paper instead of a newspaper/TV station. The change makes her quasi-romantic relationship with the TEENAGE Leonardo a lot less creepy to an audience that actually pays attention to character ages.

The turtles ask April to document their missions to defeat the criminal gangs of New York that owe allegiance to the evil mastermind, Superfly. The turtles hope that by doing a significant good deed they can become heroes, come out of the sewer to join society, and go to high school. Along the way they have to hide their activities from a concerned Splinter, evade an evil corporation that wants to capture mutant animals, and of course, deal with Superfly and his minions.

On the quality side, the voice acting is awesome. The young actors for the turtles and April are excellent. Some of my favorite bits were the turtles just hanging out with each other and chatting about random things they’d seen on their night journeys. The rest of the cast is pretty experienced and recognizable names, most notably Jackie Chan for Splinter and Ice Cube for Superfly.

The animation is a successfully executed stylistic approach. The characters are good 3D models as is the environment, while still trying to have an aesthetic similar to a comic book. Background pieces have sketch marks on them as of they were drawn by pen. Clouds of smoke look like they were done on pencil with graphite marks. When the characters are interacting with the environment it feels perfectly natural. It’s the establishing shots that felt a little weird to me. One thing that did work really well was the lighting. TMNT always takes place at night which comes with a lot of specific light sources. Mutant Mayhem kept that in mind and each scene had really good lighting treatment for everything “on stage.”

I liked the movie and was a bit surprised by that. I hadn’t been looking forward to going to it with my daughter. When I was a kid I didn’t like TMNT. I only watched the show/movies when my friends wanted to. Mutant Mayhem felt similar in quality to the Spiderverse movies. A big part of that was the animation choices and the goofy teen interactions between the turtles and April. The plot was pretty simplistic compared to Spiderverse, but not doing as good as those movies isn’t anything to be ashamed of.

So who should see Mutant Mayhem? Anyone who was a fan of TMNT in the past feels like an obvious one. Same characters, but a refreshing feel. It’s a solid superhero movie as well. Much better than a lot of Marvel’s Phase 4 or whatever DC is doing lately. Outside of those two fan groups I’m not sure I’d recommend the movie. Still, liking Marvel movies is a pretty big group, so TMNT should also have a wide appeal. I’m excited for the sequel and reboot series that I’ve heard about as well.