TMNT Mutant Mayhem Review

 This film was on my watch-list for a while, mainly because of the great and unique animation style I saw from the trailers, but I couldn't find anywhere to watch it. That is, until recently, when it got added to Netflix in the United Kingdom. So I watched it, and I had a lot of fun with it. It is definitely a fun take on the Turtles. They had a very fun dynamic together, and actually felt like teenagers, which is something a lot of the other TMNT movies don’t do all that well. They did a lot of reference humor, which added to how fun the Turtles are, and makes sense for their characters, constantly referencing movies and pop culture because of their over-exposure to it. The reference humor works for those characters really well. Although, there was a bit too much of that kind of humor throughout the film, and not just from the characters that it made sense from. Like, when the security guards called Splinter ‘Ratatouille’ I thought that was a little excessive. Also when  the Turtles said ‘Leo has no rizz’ I thought that was a bit too much. Other than gripes with the pure amounts of reference humor being a bit overplayed, I did think this film was really funny. Like, that running joke that actually pays off later on in the film, that Splinter's main reason for hating humans is that ‘They will milk the turtles’ AND THEN THEY ACTUALLY GET MILKED LATER IN THE FILM. Although the payoff of that joke is the only real reason for Cynthia to exist as a character, other than to just stretch the runtime. Like, Cynthia was set up as a secondary villain near the start of the film, but genuinely her subplot goes nowhere, and felt pretty pointless, when we already had a well set up villain in Superfly, and her character didn’t need to be there. She doesn’t even end up having any significance on the plot, other than just as a payoff to the milking joke. That's the one major issue I have with the film, that it spends way too much time on a subplot that goes nowhere, and feels pointless, because, other than that, this film was great. I love the animation, and how the character designs feel rough around the edges, and imperfect, like a notebook drawing. A truly great example of stylised animation. I thought that Splinter was a really wholesome character, and a great dad to the turtles, and I thought it was pretty funny how he just trained them on watching karate movies. Superfly was a great villain, and Ice Cube did a great job voicing him. I thought that he was genuinely pretty menacing, and seemed like a genuine threat to the turtles. He also did have a point about humans, being that they (the mutants) gave humans a chance to just let them live alongside them, and humans chased them away and tried to kill them, so he will treat them with the same respect. It’s understandable, and he is a great villain, with a good motivation. His final form is intentionally disgusting looking, and the pinnacle of this film's great character designs, looking like a really odd mesh of all of these creatures, and the final fight is really fun because of that.

The film’s plot is nothing groundbreaking, but it’s an enjoyable watch thanks to the character dynamics and the great animation. The characters make this more than just a fairly typical superhero film. Although I still feel like the ending was a bit quick, like there's no way humans are going to turn around on the mutants so quickly, just by one news reporter saying they aren’t monsters, but then again, kids movie logic. I still had a blast with this one, and the positives do outweigh the flaws. I’m feeling a Middle to Strong 7.