Ninja Turtles: Teenage Years

Things I liked:

I liked that they used actual teen actors for the turtles for the first time, and getting them to record at the same time created a natural, but at times chaotic and difficult to decipher, dialogue.

Splinter's character was more fatherly and less focused on the strict sensei/teacher role.

Superfly was a decent central villain with a bit of a backstory. He was kind of likeable to start with and turned quite dark and psychotic. Well acted by Ice Cube and gave the character some depth.

The action set pieces were exciting and fast paced.

The art style is different enough to make it visually interesting and the colours pop.

A decent soundtrack of East coast hip-hop tunes.

Things I didn't like:

April is supposed to be a vulnerable teen who is a victim of bullying, but she came across a little annoying and arrogant, with an attitude, making it difficult to warm to her.

Michelangelo wasn't "Mikey" enough, not the silly 'party dude'. Donatello didn't 'do machines' either, no gadgets or creations. There was a definite lack of distinction between the individual turtles personalities.

Many of the villains felt under used and had little screen time. With dialogue often difficult to hear clearly due to background music or sounds. They also seemed very easily swayed over their allegiance.

The origin story was changed and didn't make as much sense, but I guess it meant that they could drop Shredder and skim over it in 5 mins.

Love it or hate it, the art style is different enough to appreciate, but I hated the use of real world footage at the movie and on YouTube. It snapped you out of the world they had created. At one point I thought the cinema had randomly started playing a different film.

Some blatant product placement.

Deliberate gender and race swapping, that felt forced to appease the Hollywood quotas, and often failed to hit the mark.

Some poorly forced 'jokes' and cultural references that were often over pushed and quite literally 'milked'.

I really liked this for being a fun movie. It was a good take on TMNT with a nice looking art style to boot. The turtles and April were portrayed well, and they bantered like actual teenagers. The other mutants were also likeable, and I'd be interested in seeing them fleshed out. Also, I do have to point out that the soundtrack by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross is outstanding, and the old school hip hop songs were nicely implemented. My biggest issue with it was the formulaic story, with plot points than have been done 1000 times before. Hopefully the sequel will improve. Overall though, not a bad watch at all.

Pretty much everything I've wanted in a TMNT movie for decades, just a ton of fun in the theater. I'm as surprised as anybody that we have Seth Rogen to thank for this, but hey, whatever works. And there's plenty to be said about the art style borrowing from the Spiderverse movies, but it just fits. The Animation is vibrant, kinetic and absolutely lends itself to both the action and the humor. The whole movie looks like the margin drawings of a high schooler's notebook, that unrefined pencil and marker aesthetic.

For me, the biggest present under this Christmas tree is the age-appropriate cast. Their chemistry is incredible and the turtles actually sound and feel like teenagers for once. As much as I gravitate towards Mikey in any given iteration, Donatello had all of the killer one-liners here; I loved Micah Abbey's performance.

Maybe it's because of this Summer's frustrating movie season, but I left the theater with a real high after this. If the turtles needed a reboot, this was the way to go, and I enjoyed it from start to finish. Even that feels like an understatement ... I had a blast!

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (2023) is a movie that my daughter and I caught today at an advanced screening. The storyline follows the Ninja Turtles as they become teenagers and obsessed with the human world. They run into a reporter, named April, who accidentally convinces them that becoming heroes will help people adjust to them. They target a recent crime spree that happens to be executed by mutants that may be tied to their past.

This movie is codirected by Jeff Rowe (The Mitchells versus the Machines) and Kyler Spears (directorial debut) and contains the voices of Jackie Chan (Rush Hour), John Cena (The Suicide Squad), Ice Cube (Friday), Seth Rogen (Superbad), Paul Rudd (Ant-man), Post Malone (Wrath of Man), Giancarlo Giuseppe (Breaking Bad) and Rose Byrne (Insidious).

This is a rather uneven addition to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles universe. The storyline set-up, and background of the turtles, is perfectly executed and entertaining. The animation was excellent and almost had a claymation feel it at times. The voices were well selected and it was impossible to not love Ice Cube and Jackie Chan, who were both terrific. Despite how good Ice Cube was in this, I don't think I loved his character as the main villain. They took too many non-traditional twists with the mutants and turtles that it kind of rubbed me the wrong way. I will say the soundtrack was excellent. It might have been the best part of the movie.

Overall, this is definitely entertaining and worth a watch but I'm not sure it's the reboot we were looking for. I would score this a 6-6.5/10 and recommend seeing it once.

Mutant Mayhem is the TMNT film that every iteration of these characters has been leading up to. Yes, the original film from the 90s will forever remain, but also forever be limited by the technology and technique of the times. The Michael Bay films...while ambitious and appropriate for the time, felt a bit silly in taking these characters so seriously.

TMNT: Mutant Mayhem straddles the line between self-awareness and seriousness. This is a surprisingly sweet, heartfelt, and earnest film that carries some serious heart and, dare I say, humanity. It's a movie that explores something that other iterations have only briefly touched on: what it feels like to be a teenager, let alone one who has to be afraid of what the rest of the world thinks of you. It's nice to see a film that isn't cynical about humanity, and celebrates the best of us, whilst acknowledging our complexity. We need more of that.

This is a movie that subverts our expectations and challenges our preconceived notions of what an "action film" should be. It's absolutely hilarious, with a snappy, quick witted, almost mumble core style that I immediately gravitated to. I was honestly shocked how well-written and funny this movie is. It has so many great lines and call backs (again, they overdo it a tad) that had me bellowing. It's also a movie that intelligently analyzes the Turtles mythos and makes the brilliant decision not to waste the characters. (You'll get what I mean when you see it).

You can tell when actors are having a ton of fun with the material, and it just shone through in every frame of this movie.

Speaking of which, the Turtles - Leonardo (Nicolas Cantu), Raphael (Brady Noon), Donatello (Micah Abbey) and Michelangelo (Shamon Brown Jr.) are absolutely perfect. For the first time, they feel like teenagers and exude a youthful energy that is really difficult to capture sometimes. They have excellent chemistry, even if I felt they sometimes blended together; we're used to the Turtles having extremely distinct personalities and it's not really the case here. I can see that bugging some people, but there's enough of these characters' historical tendencies here that it's obvious their distinct interpersonal dynamics will eventually be fleshed out in sequels. These are the Turtles at the youngest we've ever seen them, after all.

I also have to shout out Ice Cube's Superfly. He's an awesome villain, with Mr. Cube shouldering a lot of the load in making him charismatic, funny, and threatening. Jackie Chan was a natural choice for Splinter and he's obviously fantastic; I'm genuinely surprised he hasn't played this role before. The rest of the mutant gang is great, if a bit under utilized; Seth Rogen's Bebop and John Cena's Rocksteady - characters we've all been dying to see - don't get as much screen time as I assumed they would, but it's fine.

Ayo Edebiri's April O'Neil has (unsurprisingly) annoyed some, as she's, you know...a Gen Z person, but I thought Edebiri and the writers did a great job of modernizing the character and having her make sense with this new take.

I didn't even mention the GORGEOUS animation, which feels a bit more evolutionary than revolutionary, but is all the same a welcome change. Remember the TMNT movie from 2007? The one with pixels and polygons? This film - in the vein of Spiderverse - eschews realism for a deliberately hand-drawn, cell-shaded look that harkens back to kids scribbling the Turtles in the their notebooks while bored in class. It's a brilliant decision and makes the film worth watching for the visuals alone. (I also like how steeped in the 80s aesthetic and weirdness this film is).

One last thing...the music. My God. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross never miss, and the last thing I expected was for the music to be so amazing and memorable, but they did it again. With a killer 80s synth/sci-fi vibe, this movie's soundtrack is worth listening to by itself (I've been putting it on while working and it's perfect). A+ song choices as well.

If I had any complaints, I do think the film takes a bit too long to get going, but once it does, it's paced extremely well. I felt the pop culture infused dialog (whilst realistic) did veer into product placement territory (and yes, there were some distracting product placements as well), which took me out of the film at times. I also felt the sound mixing was off in some scenes, which could've been my theatre, but there was a tinny sound, especially in the beginning. Oh, and there is an over reliance on overly expository dialog that I felt could've have been modified a little bit. The movie stops, multiple times, to deliver exposition in a way that I felt was a bit unnecessary.

Overall though...this may be one of my favourite movies of the year. It's truly wonderful, sweet, exciting, funny, and endlessly entertaining and heartfelt. It was the Turtles movie I didn't know I needed, and now I can't wait for the sequel. And yes, there will (likely) be a sequel, and yes...HE will be in it. If you know, you know.