Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem’ on Prime Video, a Fresh Reinvigoration of Some Stale IP

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (now streaming on Prime Video) marks the umpteenth – give or take a few – reinvention of a deathless franchise. And you know, it might be the most inspired riff on the iconic characters in decades, possibly because Seth Rogen is a co-writer and producer, and Jeff Rowe follows his co-director credit on the wonderful The Mitchells vs. the Machines with his first lead-director gig. The TMNT franchise – launched with a series of culty black-and-white comix in the mid-1980s – really needed freshening up after a meh-worthy TV series (the franchise’s fourth, with a fifth Mutant Mayhem spinoff in the works for Paramount+) that ran from 2018-20, and its two prior cinematic outings, which were produced by Michael Bay and suffered mightily because of that. In the greater cinematic context, though, one thing is certain: This visually and tonally creative film exists because we’re in a post-Into the Spider-Verse world, where animated films that don’t look like all the other animated films earn hundreds of millions and win Oscars.

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: MUTANT MAYHEM: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Note, Mutant Mayhem is a hard reboot, so we shouldn’t be surprised when it quickly gets to origining. You know, origining – it’s what happens when we already know the backstory but we’re getting it anyway. Fifteen years ago, a kerfuffle in a slightly endearingly weird weirdo’s basement laboratory resulted in a vial full of glowing green ooze falling into the New York City sewer, where it smashed open and sat there, patiently waiting for something to be mutated by it. Cue four ordinary baby turtles, who wandered through the goop and got all gooped up and became anthropomorphic baby turtles. They were found by a normal rat named Splinter (Jackie Chan!), who also got gooped up and then quickly mutated into an upright, talking rat, which made it easier to become the turtles’ adoptive father. They holed up in a cozy spot in a sewer chamber, where Splinter raised his turtle boys to appreciate pizza, and taught them to be ninjas thanks to some old VHS tapes from the 1980s (one can only hope that one of those was Gymkata).

Cut to the present day. The turtles, as it says on the package, are now teenagers. There’s Donatello (Micah Abbey), Michelangelo (Shamon Brown Jr.), Leonardo (Nicolas Cantu) and Raphael (Brady Noon), all of whom have somewhat distinct personalities, but otherwise are characterized by their collective whoa-dude lingo and a desire to see what the world is like up there where the humans live. Wisely, Splinter pooh-poohs such exposure, because he knows humans would judge them as freaks, and fears that they’ll be captured by shitheads and milked. Yes, milked. It’s the film’s strongest running joke, that some deranged maniac would want to milk a ninja turtle instead of, I dunno, dissecting them or putting them in a cage or (gasp) making them reality-TV stars, which would be a fate worse than death.

All the turtles are allowed to do is fetch (read: steal) groceries under the cover of darkness, after stores are closed. One night, their dull errands are waylaid when a friendly human teen named April O’Neil (Ayo Edibiri) spots them – then promptly gets her moped stolen. The turtles retrieve the moped, which requires them to wallop the living crud out of a bunch of thugs. It’s the beginning of beautiful friendships, one between the turtles and April, who doesn’t fear or judge or run away from them, and one between the turtles and violence, since it was their first fight, and it damn sure ain’t gonna be their last. See, April’s a budding journalist who’s trying to track down a villain dubbed Superfly (Ice Cube), who’s been stealing high-tech gadgets with such frequency, the mayor is threatening to lock down the city. April thinks breaking the story will overshadow an embarrassing incident at school, while the turtles think that thwarting Superfly will make them heroes, and therefore accepted into mainstream society. As the wise man said, if only it were so simple: Things go awry, as they pretty much almost must – and then the turtles get milked. It’s true. Turns out Splinter isn’t just a nutty old fart. He’s a smart nutty old fart.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: You know how the Spider-Verse films replicated the color and style of comic books? Mutant Mayhem takes a similar tack, with a sketchy, scribbly aesthetic that distinctly captures its gritty urban setting.

Performance Worth Watching Hearing: Rogen, Paul Rudd, Rose Byrne, John Cena and Post Malone are among a star-studded cast of supporting voice roles – but Chan is the standout, showing impeccable comic timing and delivery, aided and abetted by a zinger-laden script.

Memorable Dialogue: Donatello dishes out a diss aimed at one of his turtle bros – a prime example of this script’s frenzy of pop-culture references: “Your head looks like Stewie had a baby with Hey Arnold!”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Mutant Mayhem gives us the same old dudespeaking characters in the same old save-the-city plot, but its animation and script transcend the usual tropes of animated films (TMNT adventures or otherwise). Visually, it’s eccentric and challenging, full of surprises and youthful vigor; the characters are rendered huggably grotesque, and the backgrounds have a free-form look that sits somewhere between colored-pencil scribbles and wild graffiti. Rowe and co-director Kyler Spears show a proclivity for spirited action sequences – one deftly cross-cuts among the four turtles individual adventures and is set to Blackstreet’s “No Diggity,” and just when you think that’s the year’s best needle drop, a chase sequence dares to make us laugh when the turtles and their pals get to singing a goofy remix of 4 Non Blondes’ “What’s Up.”

The screenplay boasts five writers (that’s not counting four “story by” credits and nods to OG TMNT creators Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman), typically a warning sign in other films. But Rogen and frequent filmmaking partner Evan Goldberg (whose collaborations include This is the End, Superbad and Sausage Party) set the tone with an avalanche of jokes, including nods to everything from BTS to Fruit Ninja, Shrek and Attack on Titan. Another, less-obvious reference may be to classic X-Men comic and film storylines – Mutant Mayhem establishes its villain as a fellow mutant who has much in common with our turtles, which complicates the conflict and embellishes the screenplay’s light exploration of prejudice, acceptance and integration. This iteration of the turtles finds them yearning to be normal kids who go to school and hang out; the fact that they find themselves in a movie that looks and feels outside the norm is pretty damn refreshing.

Our Call: STREAM IT. No one’s going to accuse TMNT: Mutant Mayhem of being overly profound or poignant – especially considering most TMNT A/V outings haven’t given us much more than hyperactive violence and grating comedy – but its style, energy and imagination give it considerable appeal.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.