The Short Take:
While TMNT: Mutant Mayhem doesn’t pace its high-energy animation as well as the Spider-Verse films, its authentic representation of the teenage experience along with grotesque characters designs worthy of the sewers earn it a place among the best animated films of the year. I haven’t laughed this consistently during a movie in a looooong time.
Image Credit: Vulture
[The first section of this review will be SPOILER FREE. I will issue a spoiler warning when you need to hide out in a sewer to protect yourself.]
The Long Take:
During our CinemaCon episode (though it could have been our other movie hype episode as well), P.T. mentioned a Seth Rogen-led Ninja Turtles movie that would have the distinction of casting actual teenagers to voice all the turtles. At the time, we ooo-ed and ahh-ed with intrigue at this idea, and Greg promptly made fun of us. I would never say “I told you so” or cast aspersions on the good Dr. Cass, but I will say that I am happy to report that our enthusiasm was justified beyond a doubt.
The four young voice actors — Nicholas Cantu, Micah Abbey, Brady Noon, and Shamon Brown Jr. — not only make the turtles sound more their age, but they perfectly capture the innocent goofiness of teenagers. Hassling each other and snickering at juvenile humor, they effortlessly convey that kind of endearing obnoxiousness that only teenagers possess. There’s an entire riff, for example, on the phrase “bacon, egg, and cheese” that had me in stitches. They text. They videotape each other doing stupid stunts. They sneak off past their curfew to go to the movies or get pizza. They use the word “sus” un-ironically. In everything they do, they convey a sense of unfounded confidence almost always immediately followed by some kind of freak out or bumbling. That felt very real, and made these characters infinitely lovable. The Ninja Turtles that I grew up on, namely the late 80s animated series and the 90s live action films, were always unserious in the face of more straight-faced samurai/martial arts conflicts, but they never seemed like kids. Now they do, and that’s very fun.
Putting the teenage back in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles isn’t purely a refreshing novelty that brings something new to this IP. Seth Rogen, Jeff Rowe, and co. make being a teenager the whole story, using the concept of mutants (who just want to be accepted and considered normal by humans) to distill and concentrate the struggles of the average coming-of-age story. All the pieces to that puzzle are here: an overprotective parent, truancy, breaking the rules, a first crush, a yearning for something bigger and grander, and an inability to see past one’s own problems and desires. There just also happens to be a giant bipedal fly who wants to destroy the world, a stingray who sings “Ray Fileeetttttt” repeatedly while caressing a knife, and a gecko who just wants to vibe and make bro puns. So, you know, a totally run-of-the-mill coming-of-age story.
Image Credit: Attack of the Fanboy
I’ll get more into the theme of adolescence in the spoiler section, but, before I do, I should mention that this version of TMNT might also be the most visually striking I’ve ever seen. The character design, whether they’re humans or mutants, has a carnivalesque grotesqueness and a cyberpunky grunge feel to it. It’s so distinctive and memorable that it’s very easy to get drawn into the world Rogen & co. have created. I loved all of the ridiculous mutants. The New York locations throughout the film, from the sewer to a bodega, felt lived in, despite everything absurd and fantastical like turtles that wade through glowing ooze and turn into humanoid turtles who also happen to be martial arts experts. There’s an inherent absurdity to the Ninja Turtles franchise that this film does not ignore; quite the opposite, it leans into the weirdness and embraces nonsense.
Such a style pairs well with the edgy yet wholesome, biting yet dorky humor of the film. I laughed at every joke and every awkward moment from start to finish. Think James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy or The Suicide Squad. Or The Lego Movie, but with fewer licensing tie-ins? Perhaps those are unfair comparisons that undercut the originality of this film.
My only complaint is that Mutant Mayhem is a lot like Netflix’s The Mitchells vs. The Machines, a film I generally enjoyed but found to be overly stimulating or too hyperactive at times. TMNT MM uses the “animating on 3s” style that Spider-Verse popularized, in which there are eight new drawings per second as opposed to the standard 12. This gives the animation a rougher, sketchier, almost stop-motion-like feel. Again, I’m generally a fan of this style. It’s more vibrant, artsier, more painterly, and has the potential to give characters and setting a lot more personality.
The problem with the use of this style, however, is that it can be too much to process when there is constant action. I’m no animation expert, but my experience when watching TMNT MM was not as pleasurable as the Spider-Verse films because there weren’t as many breaks. All action movies, whether live action or animated, need to have quieter moments, to give the audience more time to regroup and reflect on character development. But I find that’s especially true with this new animation style, and I think Mutant Mayhem could have been even better if we had had more opportunities to breathe and catch up. Fortunately, the killer soundtrack, chock full of genius throwbacks to classic hip hop from the 80s and 90s, combined with the cerebral, oftentimes softer and quieter techno/electronica score by Oscar winners Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross does a lot to steady the frenetic action and give the film a sense of rhythm.
[SPOILER ALERT: I’m about to discuss the film in more detail. There’s one reveal that’s not a huge plot twist or anything, but I wouldn’t want to rob anyone of the joy of discovering it in real time.]
Image Credit: CNN
The headline here, as I mentioned earlier, is that this is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but with actual teenagers. What was less obvious, until I went home and thought about it, though, is the complexity with which the film engages with the concept of adolescence. And that is largely due to one massive film reference in the first act that, I think, then colors the rest of the story, casting a thematic shadow over it.
Bueller…? Bueller…? Bueller…?
When we first see the turtle bros sneak out, despite Leonardo’s responsible misgivings, they watch an outdoor screening of John Hughes’ 1986 classic, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. As they gawk at Bueller’s swagger, they have a conversation about how badly they want to go to high school. They’re tired of living in hiding, and Bueller makes being a high schooler look SO cool. He’s popular. He can do whatever he wants. He’s living their dream.
On the one hand, this scene sets the stakes of the film in a very grounded way. The Midnight Boys on The Ringer-Verse commented that this movie felt so joyous and refreshing in part because it wasn’t trying to bring together every single Ninja Turtle that ever was. There’s no multiverse to save. The conflict is specific to New York and is so much “smaller” in comparison to what other superhero films have been offering us lately. These Turtles don’t want to save the world. They don’t even want to be superheroes. All they want is to be normal teenagers who go to high school. They want to have lockers. They want to join after school clubs. They want to go to prom. They only think of the superhero life as a means to an end: to get them accepted by human high schoolers.
The choice to show Ferris Bueller’s Day Off specifically makes this teenage daydream all the more complicated because Ferris Bueller himself hates high school. He spends the whole movie trying to avoid it. In the now iconic opening sequence of Hughes’ film, Bueller fakes being sick, tricking his parents into letting him stay home from school. In direct address to the camera, he admits, “It’s a little childish and stupid, but so is high school.” The message is clear: Ferris Bueller is cool, but high school is not.
The Turtles, on the other hand, think going to class and doing other “normal” high school activities would be the coolest. We see at the end of the film that they thrive and become model high school students given the chance. Michaelangelo gets into improv, Leonardo becomes April’s videographer for the school news, Rafael becomes a star wrestler, and Donatello finds his fam of fellow otaku gamers. None of them exhibit any desire to play possum (or rat?) and stay home. Quite the opposite; they are there 100% voluntarily. They do have the same carpe diem attitude that Bueller does; it’s just applied to mundane human life instead of singing karaoke in the middle of a parade. High school is the escape rather than the place from which to escape.
Why make Ferris Bueller the pinnacle of their hopes and dreams, then?
The Turtles’ misinterpretation of Ferris Bueller’s ethos is key. All they can see is a cool kid everyone loves. They fail to realize that his cult of personality hinges on his ability to rebel against the system as a slacker and get away with it. And that, I think, is because Bueller has transcended his own character to represent a powerful, romanticized representation of adolescence that we have constructed over decades of American filmmaking.
Seth Rogen himself, in fact, has made some of those films — Superbad being the most notable. Clueless was a pretty big deal when I was a teenager. There are countless others, from The Breakfast Club to Mean Girls. Feel free to shout out your favorite teen comedy in the comments. Even when characters are positioned in a film as uncool, they are incredibly cool. Even a newer series like Stranger Things, which, granted, is an homage to the Amblin films of the 80s, sets incredibly unrealistic expectations for what high school is like. Those kids are nerds at their school, but they are still exceedingly cool from all their unsanctioned heroics. (Not unlike some turtles we now know.)
Therefore, Mutant Mayhem, in placing Ferris Bueller at the center of the Turtles’ hopes and dreams, ultimately creates a tension between high school as pop culture imagines it — as the turtles dream about it — and high school as it actually is. The cracks in the armor begin to show when the Turtles learn that April is actually extremely uncool at her school. Her locker says “puke girl” on it and she begrudgingly tells them the story of how she puked on camera when she tried to do the morning announcements.
The despair she feels parallels the Turtles’ own feelings of loneliness and isolation that they feel as mutants. I thought it was very clever to have April and the Turtles grow closer after this reveal. The parallel journeys of desperately seeking acceptance and doing the right things for the wrong reasons was not only structurally tidy; it justified and solidified the dynamic between these characters in a way I’ve never seen before.
Image Credit: LA Times
As an added bonus, Ayo Edibiri’s voice performance here is top notch. Her intonation, which I can best describe as a slow, quizzical ascent of blunt comments and questions highlights the Turtles’ teenaged shenanigans perfectly. It’s hard to top her exposition recap of how the Turtles came to be, but aside from that, my favorite line of hers might be, “Do I have to film everything you do? …because some of it is dumb.” Her reactions help establish how uncool and how adolescent the Turtles really are.
Through this tension between a romanticized, idealized high school and an awkward, alienating, and bleak high school, this film lands on a paradox. Both are somehow true, coexisting at the same time. Since our Turtles and April prevail, and they become heroes not only of April’s high school, but all of New York City, they do achieve Ferris Bueller level notoriety. They all adore them. They think they’re righteous dudes.
High school, at least for heroes, can both be the best years of your life, in which you feel a baseless sense of invincibility, and the cruelest, most miserable existence, in which you do not feel comfortable in your own skin.
Wait, was this just Seth Rogen’s way of trying to make going to school cool again? To take back rule following from Ferris Bueller? Have we ushered in a new era in which going to school is cooler than skipping school? Maybe I shouldn’t think about it that hard.
…
You’re still here? It’s over. Go home.