Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem | Cowabunga, We Have A Winner!

Mutant Mayhem hits the reset button on the TMNT franchise to press home the fact that the Turtles are first and foremost teenagers, writes Prahlad Srihari.

Still from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem

EARLY on in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem a fresh animated reboot of a shell-shocked franchise, the four goofy misfits Mikey, Donnie, Leo and Raph slack off from running errands to sneak into an open-air screening at a Brooklyn drive-in. The movie being shown on this particular night is John Hughes’ '80s teen romp Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Watching three high-schoolers on screen play hooky, carpe diem, and figure out who they are — resounds deeply in the minds of the Turtles, all of whom long for acceptance and a life of normalcy. Mutant Mayhem hits the reset button on the TMNT franchise to press home the fact that the Turtles are first and foremost teenagers, a fact the franchise seemed to have forgotten somewhere between all the ill-conceived live-action features. The title here may advertise “mutant” twice and promise “mayhem”, but “teenage” is very much the operative word.

For a quartet of half-shelled crime-fighters named after Renaissance painters to resonate in our superhero-media saturated zeitgeist, the TMNT franchise needed some sort of pivot, in terms of theme, tone or the medium itself. Director Jeff Rowe attempts a triple jump — and Mutant Mayhem is all the better for it. Fresh eyes indeed bring fresh perspective. The Turtles are not just skateboarding, ninjutsu-trained, pizza-loving New Yorkers. Not with Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg as two of the writers and producers. Being hormonal adolescents, the Turtles are also impulsive, insecure, and itching to fit in. In addition, with the setting having moved from the '80s to our present, the four film themselves slicing watermelons with swords like real-life Fruit Ninjas, sing BTS, and geek out on anime.

Speaking of animation, Rowe (who was a writer on Gravity Falls and co-directed The Mitchells vs. the Machines) opts for a bustling mosaic of grimy textures, street-art sensibilities and doodlepad messiness. Following in the footsteps of recent releases like Nimona and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish Mutant Mayhem is another example of how Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse has been a game-changer and a watershed moment for the medium. By moving away from Pixar’s CG photorealism, the 2018 feature encouraged animators to experiment with their own styles. With Mutant Mayhem, Rowe retraces the comic book roots of the TMNT franchise with a freewheeling, anything-goes approach. What gives the film its personality is its peculiarity, which suits a story about bright green mutants forced to live as outcasts in the sewers. On the surface, neon-smeared New York presents more restless wizardry. When the Turtles leap across rooftops, the film swings into choppy flights of fantasy, drawing over the lines in joyous anarchy, as befits a youthful rebellion. The jerky nature of the animation, however, doesn’t break the flow of the story, as it gets a nice assist from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s punchy score and East Coast hip hop.

A quick intro/memory jogger takes us back to the origins of the green ooze which transformed regular turtles into humanoid mutants — a reversal of the typical superhero origin story where regular humans take on animal powers (Black Panther, Ant-Man, Spider-Man, Vixen to name a few). Upon transformation, the Turtles retreat to the sewers with a mutant rat. The rat Splinter (Jackie Chan) becomes their father figure, raising them in fear of humanity and training them as ninjas so they can defend themselves while sneaking aboveground at night to gather food and supplies.

For the most part, the Turtles retain their original personalities: Donatello (Micah Abbey) is the smart one; Michaelangelo (Shamon Brown Jr.) is the wisecracking goofball; Raphael (Brady Noon) is the aggro one; and Leonardo (Nicolas Cantu) is the level-headed leader. As the years pass by and the Turtles grow older, they can’t help but desire a normal high-school life, beyond their isolation, away from the overprotective eye of their dad. When Superfly (Ice Cube) and the other mutant animals threaten to rise up against mankind and build a new world order, the Turtles decide to take matters into their own hands — in the hope of mankind not shunning them as outcasts but accepting them as their own.

If Mutant Mayhem can be considered a shot in the arm of a franchise on its last legs, it isn’t for its timeworn comic book storyline or its climactic showdown against a mutant Godzilla. It is for the film’s focus on four teenagers on a journey towards self-discovery and acceptance. It is for the four teenage voice actors who bring the Turtles to life. It is for Ayo Edebiri’s angsty voice performance as April O’Neil, no longer resident eye-candy but a fellow teen misfit with journalist ambitions. It is for Chan who brings a tender sweetness and a comical paranoia to the character of a lonesome father anxious about his kids leaving the nest for a world full of dangers. Most of all, it is for the animation’s industrial-strength ooze which energises the film and never dries up.

Cowabunga, we have a winner.

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