Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem Review

August 3, 2023 at 6:26pm
By Jason Stettner

Mutant Mayhem is the latest retelling of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and they largely just nailed it. The movie is a ton of fun, it’s perfect for the younger audience and it provided an entertaining story matched with gorgeous art work. This really was quite something to take in and as a fan of the characters it’s nice to have such a solid outing for a franchise that has had, some ups and downs over the years.

Or well, maybe some more downs than ups one would likely note. While it does act as an origin tale it doesn’t stick with the origin telling too deeply giving you a brief view point into what happened before thrusting you into the action and the core of this current story.

It’s straight up four brothers that happen to be mutant turtles that just want to be normal kids. They’re jealous of the interactions that humans get to have and wish they were accepted. That’s a large theme of the film, acceptance though with that it also seems you need to do something wildly heroic to achieve that which somewhat muddles that message.

I know there’s more substance to it than that, but it’s largely what is what happens through the storytelling. Anyways, there’s been some heist by some sort of mysterious kingpin type leader and with the connection to April O’Neil (Ayo Edebiri) the titular characters work out what’s going on.

The art aesthetic for this film truly was gorgeous. It just nails the vibe and feeling that these characters have behind them and I loved it. It really felt like I was watching literal art on the screen and I love that this stylistic approach can be used commonly nowadays to great effect. It felt fluid, stylized and through the entirety was awesome to take in.

They really do have some excellent visual sequences that were sleek, but also tell an effective tale. They do also have quite a cast of characters here, though it can at times also feel busy. This is certainly a different take on the characters so some motives for the mutants might be different than what you’re used to.

It works, but also changes up some narrative bits that I’ve often enjoyed in previous works. I was a initially a tad worried about the focus on such young voice options for the cast, but it worked so well in creating an awkward geeky teenage like vibe and I loved the interactions between the turtles, so chill.

The Conclusion

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem delivers charm, heroics and an excellent take on these iconic characters with a stunning visual aesthetic to match. I really just can’t get over how much I loved the look of this movie, it really did feel like I was just taking in art the entire time.

This matched with music and really cool action sequences made for a pleasing atmosphere. There were some awesome montage moments that really highlighted this, such as a criminal battle scene. It was so cool. The voice acting fit for the take on the characters well and I liked the goal for some of the themes they had.

I’m not sure the ending was anything too wildly different from what we’ve seen prior but I did largely just enjoy this a lot. It’s great for turtles fans with fun references, well captured characters and I look forward to seeing this expanded upon further as it seems ripe to build from. Finally, a truly great TMNT movie.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem Review at Theater with Standard Viewing
Screening Provided by Taro PR

Rating Overall: 8.2