Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem Movie Review

“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” is an animated movie that loves the Mayhem almost as much as it loves the Mutants. The four classic-artist-named Turtles are back to rock New York City. Plus dealing with the mutant monsters isn’t quite as difficult as dealing with adolescence.

First off, an evil company named TCRI has a brilliant scientist who has gone rogue. His name is Dr. Baxter Stockman (voiced by Giancarlo Esposito), inventor of an ooze that will mutate animals. He steals all of his research and creates a large group of test subjects. The first one is a small fly, and his secret lair is invaded. Cynthia Utrom (voiced by Maya Rudolph) is sending a strike force to get back all of the secret ooze.

But then Stockman is dead, and the mutated fly has disappeared with other test tubes and the ooze. There is one canister that had fallen into a sewer. There are four baby turtles exposed to the science experiment gone wrong. There is also a friendly rat, who decided to take in the homeless turtle brothers.

Then fifteen years later, these ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ are making the sewers of New York safe. Led by the older rat named Splinter (voiced by Jackie Chan), they have learned to shun the City streets and the humans. The ooze has give them all some special powers, including Splinter. They all have become experts in martial arts.

The TMNT group is lead by Leonardo (voiced by Nicolas Cantu), and there is also Michelangelo (voiced by Shamon Brown Jr.), and Raphael (voiced by Brady Noon), and Donatello (voiced by Micah Abbey). Splinter has taught them all to protect themselves with various matrial skills. They are also supposed to stay far away from all humans.

But being teenagers means that they have to break the rules. So they happen to meet a human teenage girl named April O’Neil (voiced by Ayo Edebiri). She is not shocked by the human-sized Turtles with funny names and awesome skills. She could use some help with her investigative research. She has been writing articles for the high school paper about an evil company named TCRI.

Many items have been stolen, and the TCRI people have no clue – as well as the City cops. The ones behind all the robberies are all of Dr. Stockman’s Mutant experiments from fifteen years ago. The leader of this Mutant group calls himself Superfly (voiced by Ice Cube). He has spent the past years raising a little family of Mutants.

The Superfly ‘crime family’ has many members, all Mutant animals from the Stockman test tubes. There is Rocksteady (voiced by John Cena) — a rhinoceros. Also, there is Bebop (voiced by Seth Rogen) — a warthog, and good pal to Rocksteady. There is a wild skate-boarding lizard named Mondo Gecko (voiced by Paul Rudd). And there is a mean alligator named Leatherhead (voiced by Rose Byrne) and one named Genghis Frog (voiced by Hannibal Buress).

The TMNT meet the Superfly group at the scene of a robbery. They find out that all of them have been mutated by the same ooze. So that makes them all — cousins? Superfly wants the Turtles to join up with his group. He has hatched a plan to duplicate the ooze and affect all the creatures on Earth.

The Mutated Creatures would rise up and kill all Humans. Nothing would make Superfly more happy than that. The Turtles are a little shaken up by that plan. After all, they just met April, and she was nice to all of them. In fact, she thinks she can help the Turtles stop Superfly and make the Turtles heros. They would be famous and they could attend her high school.

The rest of Superfly’s gang of Mutants also agrees that the Human do not need to be killed. Superfly will not take ‘No’ for an answer. It will be up to him to put his plan into action. And even when Splinter finds out what his group has gotten into, he does not agree to kill the Humans. It is time to band together and shut down Superfly. Will they need to call in the “SWAT” team?

“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” is a new movie is a long string of TMNT developments. There are other animated movies, animated TV shows, live-action movies, and Product tie-ins. You can’t have a Ninja Turtle without having an associated Pizza Company!

But this movie has leaned into the fast animation style of the recent “Spider-Man: Across” animated films. The Mutant Mayhem springs from the colorful style of rough sketch drawings, adding into an almost 3-D ‘claymation’ affect for the characters. It works really well and looks solid.

The writing is really slick, seeing that writing and producing team of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg are big contributors. You can see how much they appreciate the source material. Also, the Director, Jeff Rowe, was involved with the development of the story and the script. So you can tell that there is a lot of love and respect for the Turtles!

The voice acting is right on the money. You could not ask for a better ‘father figure / sensei leader’ than Jackie Chan. All the ‘Teenage Turtles’ are voiced by actual teenagers. And then having Ice Cube doing the voice of the main ‘bad bug’ is excellent.

“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” sets the mood and gets the style right for a wonderful outing of magnificent mayhem with some teenage turtles.