By Gary

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles return in a new adventure that tackles adolescence.

The film follows the Turtle brothers as they work to earn the love of New York City while facing down an army of mutants.

As a child of the late 80’s/early 90’s this movie brings the nostalgia for that era.

This movie felt very comic book like as some of the scenes felt taken straight from the original comics by Kevin Eastman.

TMNT: Mutant Mayhem has a very impressive voice cast which includes Jackie Chan, Seth Rogan, Paul Rudd, John Cena, Rose Byrne, Ice Cube and Giancarlo Esposito.

Shredder was originally in the film but was written out because writer Jeff Rowe wanted the film’s villain to be a mutant that shared empathy with the Turtles and who could easily tempt or corrupt them.

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 such as what it feels like to be a teenager, let alone one who must 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 I

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.

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.

There are some scenes in this with blatant product placement which takes you out of the movie a little bit.

My Rating: 6/10