Ninja Turtles: Caos mutante

This is one of those animations that pleases everyone, from a 5-year-old to a 15-year-old teenager, a 35-year-old adult and a 75-year-old.

The story can be minimally complex for the little ones, but in itself, it is extremely fun and brings some interesting reflections throughout its plot. Both in the original language and in the dubbing (Brazilian Portuguese), the voices and their slang are perfectly matched to the characters, what a perfect cast! Only the jokes with references to PT-BR, made me laugh more than I should.

Mr. Spilnter is a little left out, but nothing that bothers him. What bothers you is that some drama cliches are present in your character. However, only in him... (which I find strange, as the story of the film is not predictable).

I thought changing April's ethnicity was just another way to cash in on diversity, but it doesn't seem like that, and yes, I like this version of the character.

The movie is amazing for those idiots whose middle school jokes still occupy their mind! Did I describe you?

Watch it in the cinema right away!

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.

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 think from the initial teaser I could tell this was gonna be an amazing animated movie since it adopted the "Spiderverse" style fantastically aswell as adding its own charm. And after watching it I can safely say that it is...almost amazing.

First of all, the animation is very clearly gorgeous and was another great addition to the animated Disney rebellion we've been having over the past few years. The action sequences were also very good and expressed each characters unique fighting style very well. The voice acting was also surprisingly amazing from both the main 4 characters and the villains. The comedy was solid it didn't really have much that made me laugh out loud but at least it consistently made me smile. The story was actually very good aswell. Sure it's got the cliche "I want to be accepted in society" plot line but they actually do a good job at making me feel for these characters during just the first 15 minutes of the movie. The script was...well it was mostly good (I'll explain the issues later). The chemistry between the brothers is great and the villain's dialogue was amazing. So from the sound of it this movie is amazing, right?

Well a couple of issues I had like I mentioned before was the script. So for a large portion of the movie they kept adding as many pop culture references as possible within their speech mentioning a huge range of movies and shows specifically like Attack On Titan. Whilst these are fun at first, it just keeps happening again and again and like I get it they're all nerds but just calm down a bit.

Also one of the main problems I had was the music. You have these big over the top colourful action sequences yet you're listening to the most boring emotionless music on top of them. WHY? They had a massive opportunity to create something unbelievably special to rival something like Spiderverse yet kept the music to a minimum. I've always said that music can make or break a scene. You can have one of the greatest scenes visually in cinematic history but if the music misses and doesn't match with the emotion of the scene, it DRASTICALLY reduces the quality of that scene. I felt next to no emotion during most of the climax since the music was just boring and didn't really feel like there was any build up.

The other big problem was the lack of character arcs within each brother. I get that they're all in this together but I would have liked to see some specific character moments in the climax that act as pay offs to their own characters. We did get a great character moment for Splinter but that's about it.

Overall this movie is just a very fun and unique movie with a somewhat lack of emotional depth. The characters are solid and help to create an engaging quite funny story. Solid 7/10. Could have been an 8 if the music was improved.

Firstly, the animation for this film is exceptional. A truly unique depiction of New York. It's gritty, it's rugged but it also feel inviting. The scenic images and close up character shots feels like they have been ripped from the pages of a comic book.

Whilst this may be an origin movie, the film is well paced and doesn't dwell on any one area for too long. After an introduction and 15 year time jump, we quickly get to understand the feelings and motivations of the characters which drive the plot in a natural manner.

As a result the characters feel real which make for interesting on screen interactions. Splinter is an overly protective Father whilst the turtles are teenagers trying to grow out of their shells. Set in modern day New York, these Teenage Turtles are up to speed with pop culture which leads to funny one liners, easter eggs and mentions.

The voice acting is great all round. Ice Cube is fantastic as Superfly, a street wise villain with a disdain for humans. At its heart, TMNT: Ninja Mayhem is a film about fitting it, growth and acceptance between amongst both humans and 'mutants'. This results in a perfect mix of a fun, comedy and a heartfelt story which can be enjoyed by everybody young and old.