Jolted by positive reviews, “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” exceeded expectations with a $43 million opening at the weekend box-office.
It was widely praised at the Annecy Animation Film Festival last month. I was out of town the week it had its first press screening, and, sadly, again, missed the second one. I finally bought a ticket for the damn thing on Thursday.
I don’t know if it’s because this movie is coming off the back of “Across the Spider-Verse,” but, although it looks visually pleasing, I found the story rather childish. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ score is groovy though.
This is meant to be an origin story, with the turtles sheltered from the human world, and meeting their first human friend, April O’Neil, in the gritty streets of New York. A mysterious crime syndicate gets uncovered, ditto some hijinks at April’s high school. This leads to some erratic action sequences that, although gorgeously visual, felt too chaotic and choppy.
None other than Seth Rogen wrote the film, and there is a TON of pop culture references, but none of the dialogue really has any comedic bite to it. It’s very safe. It skews young and that’s alright, the kiddos will probably love this one.
It is, however, animated in this sort of inventively crepuscular fashion, which easily reminds you of the ‘Spider-Verse’ films, but less trippy. In fact, visually speaking, this should count as the first full-on major studio ‘Spider-Verse’ rip-off. We’re going to be seeing a lot more of these in the coming years.
The turtles themselves, save for the pop culture obsessed Michaelangelo, all seem to have similarly dull personalities. Also, if you’re a purist, and want a retro TMNT, you won’t be getting it here. The voice actors do not nail any of the personal traits of the original characters. This is quite literally Rogan setting up TMNT for the Tik Tok generation.
I seem to be in the minority when it comes to the critical consensus, but, I don’t know, maybe also our readers liked it more than I did. Who else watched ‘Mutant Mayhem’ this weekend?
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