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Description
TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: MUTANT MAYHEM.
Directed by: Jeff Rowe.
Written by: Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, Jeff Rowe, Dan Hernandez and Benji Samit.

Starring: Micah Abbey, Shamon Brown Jr., Nicolas Cantu, Brady Noon, Ayo Edebiri, Maya Rudolph, John Cena, Seth Rogen, Rose Byrne, Natasia Demetriou, Giancarlo Esposito, Jackie Chan, Ice Cube, Paul Rudd, Austin Post and Hannibal Buress.

Based on the indie comic produced by: Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman.
Rated: PG (Contains suggestive themes, language and violence).

Just a small clarification before we start. I said beforehand that I have no desire to even watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem and I have stuck to that promise, because this isn't even my review. Long story short: Di’Aniss and Kari were out of town on a little birthday vacation. They had a couple of hours to kill before their hotel room was finished being prepared so they decided to go to the nearby cinema.

In her own words: “It was either this or Barbienheimer.”

The following review is based on the very long phone conversation we had later that night, where she decided to get all her thoughts and opinions of the film down while it was still fresh in her mind. I've essentially taken most of that conversation and put it into the review you see before you.

So then, what did Di’Aniss (and I guess Kari) think of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem?

Okay, let me start by saying I'm not exactly a Turtles fan, but I know enough to get by. I saw the 1990's movie recently and while it was cheesy, I'd rather watch that again than whatever the hell THIS was supposed to be. Before that, I only ever saw a few episodes of what’s referred to as the 2003 series, but I was more into Teen Titans and Xiaolin Showdown at this point in time.

Let me go over the only positive with this movie. The relationship between the Turtles and Splinter felt very genuine. In the past, Splinter was less of a father and more of a strict teacher to the Turtles, whereas here I could believe this was a struggling family unit.

Well, that’s the positives done, now onto the bad. I could be a bitch and say "Written by Seth Rogen" and call it a day, but let’s break this down.

Personally, I could have done without another version of the Turtles’ origin story. Between this, Batman, Superman and Spider-Man, I really don’t need to see a version of this again. I get it, this is a reboot, but it just feels redundant and repeating something you should know off by heart at this point.

In this version of the origin, Baxter Stockman is responsible for the Turtles creation, along with the main villain of the movie: Superfly. I heard Baxter is supposed to turn into a Fly, so doing this seemed out of place. He’s quickly assaulted by a weird German lady who wants the ooze for, I dunno, world domination or something? Her accent was fucking abysmal, but she has the surname Utrom just for a shitty reference. It would be like having a Transformers movie with a character called "Decepticon."

The way Baxter refuses to hand over his life’s work reminded me of William Birkin from Resident Evil 2, but with terrible delivery and forced exposition. This origin also manages to crowbar in a large number of side-characters such as Bebop, Rocksteady, Mondo Gecko, Leatherhead, Wingnut, Scumbag and Genghis Frog for no reason beyond “buy some toys.”

The only new thing these characters have are silly accents, with Bebop being voiced by Seth Rogen himself. Funny, and I thought Bebop was black? Also Leatherhead, Scumbag and Wingnut are girls now. Because "diversity?" I’d ask they just make some new mutants, but that requires creativity.

Another thing I didn’t like was how the movie DESPERATELY wanted to be Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. I understand this is a popular animation style right now, but I find it to not only be ugly, but gave me motion sickness. I’m not joking when I say this, but the colours were so bright and oversaturated, I literally had to wear sunglasses to stop my eyes from hurting. Spider-Verse piggy bagging to one side, I also hate the artstyle in general as everyone looked like melted action figures; particularly the faces that looked lopsided for some reason.

One thing I took note of with the 1990's movie was very specific pulp culture jokes. The kind that maybe your dad would understand, but unfortunately date the movie instantly. With Mutant Mayhem, take that feeling and multiply it by a thousand as it contains very terrible and forced references in order to appeal to the kids. It feels like an old person glanced at Youtube for five minutes and said "yeah, this is what the kids are into!" while failing to understand it entirely. The truly sad bit is the references they've picked would fly over the heads of a younger audience. Between the cringey Shrek reference, to literal cameos by Post Malone and Mr. Beast, it feels like Seth and co wrote this for themselves!

Case in point: The Turtles, for some reason, want to be Ferris Bueler. Yes, because the kids know what that is. Even I don't know what that is and I'm not the target demographic for this bullshit.

Random: It sounds to me like Seth Rogen made this up as he went along.
Di'Aniss: I mean, it's Seth. He probably smoked a fat one and said "yeah, that sounds fine!"

Random: Careful, Di. He may cry in an interview and say "You're being mean!"
Di'Aniss: He's making the mistake of thinking I care.

I can tell Seth wrote this because I don't think he's a very smart man. Care to explain to me Seth how you can have full fibre optic broadband IN THE FUCKING SEWER? I imagine his response would be "Hyehuhuhuhuhuhuhuhuh!! But how else are the Toiduls gunna have their product placement iPhones? Hyehhuhuhuhuhuhuh!" That's the best way I can summarise this movie: "Everything was either a reference or product placement."

I know this kind of shit would annoy Random (and I'd never hear the end of it) but there was a lot of things this movie did even I found to be stupid.

Splinter is a massive racist. It's explained why he hates humans, but if you swap out "humans" for any race, it instantly becomes a bit sus. He explains to the Turtles "you're so obsessed with the human world, so I went up there to see if we could fit in!" but was attacked by an angry mob - therefore he goes full Magneto on hating humanity! No relation to Hamata Yoshi. Just a regular rat in Brooklyn with a thick Chinese accent. I know you got THE Jackie Chan to play him, but come the fuck on.

Because Splinter had the shit kicked out of him, he decided to become a kung fu master. No prior knowledge or learning from his Master Yoshi. Just "saw Hong Kong movies and watched Youtube videos and said YES!" Literally, a Youtube video called "HOW TO NINJA!" It's about as fucking stupid as saying "Bruce Wayne became the Batman because he saw a fucking stream on Twitch of someone playing GTA3." Or Yoda goes on Facebook and finds a "JEDI HOW TO" post.

This movie has set the bar as low as a neckbeard basement.

As for the Turtles themselves: Leo was trying to be a sensible leader, but he's a taddletale and a complete wuss. Raph was a watered down version of previous versions, with a mix of his 1987 counterpart and something of a co-leader. Mikey is still the super silly clown; to the point he wants to join a stand up comedy circuit. He's the youngest but has a deeper voice because reasons. Donnie is still the punching bag and subjected to another batch of nerd cliches. Silly glasses, girly voice and an even bigger wuss than Leo. A few cringey jabs at anime and k-pops, because "nerds, am I right?"

Also, they steal from stores. I thought there hold gimmick was to fight crime and beat up criminals - not emulate them?

There was never any time to contemplate the plot at hand. They were more interested in adding in more jokes and references than establish things. It wants to be sad and depressing, but jokes. They literally make the same Batman joke Michael Bay did in his shitty movies. Ontop of that, tThey kept repeating the same jokes over, and over, and over, and over again. One example was "a milking joke" Take a shot everytime they say the word milk. It wasn't funny the first 50 times you said it. Because of how cringey it became, my friend Kari and I had to constantly look away from the screen, turn to each other and mutter "oh God why?"

I know the Internet cares about this next topic, but I personally don't. However, let's talk about April.

She's basically a Jen Eric while talking like a nonchalant teenager and blazay about everything. In other words, she's "what a boardroom think how kids talk, but clearly sounds more like a middle-aged millenial." She wants to sell their life story to boost her career because she's a cliched loser with no friends (That tired old chestnut). The reason she's unpopular is because she puked live on air. Her classmates call her "Puke-Girl" and "April O'Puke." I lose sympathy with her because she manipulates the Turtles for her own selfish reasons. She an unlikeable character that puts people in danger all for the sake of a story, but predictably changes her ways by the end which comes across as half-hearted.

As for our main villain, Superfly's plan is to "kill all humans" with yet another skybeam and the plot from Amazing Spider-Man 1. So when Michael Bay did this, it's BAD. Yet with Seth Rogen it's good? Da fuck? He's also aided by the other side-characters until the Turtles convince them to live in their sewer with their wifi and pizza, whereas Superfly basically says "you're all a bunch of incepid twats! You can't let a sappy speech sway your dumbasses!" I was Superfly in that moment.

They all turn on Superfly to stop him from destroying the world, yet he oneshots them until Splinter arrives. Superfly tries to give Splinter that tiresome "you and I are the same" speech but gets his shit kicked in by everyone. This leads to Superfly's death, until he comes back as a giant kaiju by merging with sea creatures and zoo animals - Leading to this exchange.

Di: Wait, why does he have horses for legs?
Kari: From the horses in the zoo.
Di: Zoos don't have horses!
Kari:

Through the power of friendship, Superfly dies... except not really for he's in the post-credit scene. Oh and Shredder's name dropped. I'd be more descript about that, but I'm kinda tired of talking about this now.

(Conclusion).
I walked out of that cinema wishing I could get that time back. The movie exists but it I cannot say I'll ever give this a second viewing. Maybe if I was a Turtles fan, I'd be more invested, but if you gave me a choice of watching a movie likes this, or staring at a wall for 2 hours, I'd happily choose the wall.

You may enjoy it, but I can't say I did.

Description
TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: MUTANT MAYHEM.
Directed by: Jeff Rowe.
Written by: Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, Jeff Rowe, Dan Hernandez and Benji Samit.

Starring: Micah Abbey, Shamon Brown Jr., Nicolas Cantu, Brady Noon, Ayo Edebiri, Maya Rudolph, John Cena, Seth Rogen, Rose Byrne, Natasia Demetriou, Giancarlo Esposito, Jackie Chan, Ice Cube, Paul Rudd, Austin Post and Hannibal Buress.

Based on the indie comic produced by: Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman.
Rated: PG (Contains suggestive themes, language and violence).

Just a small clarification before we start. I said beforehand that I have no desire to even watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem and I have stuck to that promise, because this isn't even my review. Long story short: Di’Aniss and Kari were out of town on a little birthday vacation. They had a couple of hours to kill before their hotel room was finished being prepared so they decided to go to the nearby cinema.

In her own words: “It was either this or Barbienheimer.”

The following review is based on the very long phone conversation we had later that night, where she decided to get all her thoughts and opinions of the film down while it was still fresh in her mind. I've essentially taken most of that conversation and put it into the review you see before you.

So then, what did Di’Aniss (and I guess Kari) think of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem?

Okay, let me start by saying I'm not exactly a Turtles fan, but I know enough to get by. I saw the 1990's movie recently and while it was cheesy, I'd rather watch that again than whatever the hell THIS was supposed to be. Before that, I only ever saw a few episodes of what’s referred to as the 2003 series, but I was more into Teen Titans and Xiaolin Showdown at this point in time.

Let me go over the only positive with this movie. The relationship between the Turtles and Splinter felt very genuine. In the past, Splinter was less of a father and more of a strict teacher to the Turtles, whereas here I could believe this was a struggling family unit.

Well, that’s the positives done, now onto the bad. I could be a bitch and say "Written by Seth Rogen" and call it a day, but let’s break this down.

Personally, I could have done without another version of the Turtles’ origin story. Between this, Batman, Superman and Spider-Man, I really don’t need to see a version of this again. I get it, this is a reboot, but it just feels redundant and repeating something you should know off by heart at this point.

In this version of the origin, Baxter Stockman is responsible for the Turtles creation, along with the main villain of the movie: Superfly. I heard Baxter is supposed to turn into a Fly, so doing this seemed out of place. He’s quickly assaulted by a weird German lady who wants the ooze for, I dunno, world domination or something? Her accent was fucking abysmal, but she has the surname Utrom just for a shitty reference. It would be like having a Transformers movie with a character called "Decepticon."

The way Baxter refuses to hand over his life’s work reminded me of William Birkin from Resident Evil 2, but with terrible delivery and forced exposition. This origin also manages to crowbar in a large number of side-characters such as Bebop, Rocksteady, Mondo Gecko, Leatherhead, Wingnut, Scumbag and Genghis Frog for no reason beyond “buy some toys.”

The only new thing these characters have are silly accents, with Bebop being voiced by Seth Rogen himself. Funny, and I thought Bebop was black? Also Leatherhead, Scumbag and Wingnut are girls now. Because "diversity?" I’d ask they just make some new mutants, but that requires creativity.

Another thing I didn’t like was how the movie DESPERATELY wanted to be Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. I understand this is a popular animation style right now, but I find it to not only be ugly, but gave me motion sickness. I’m not joking when I say this, but the colours were so bright and oversaturated, I literally had to wear sunglasses to stop my eyes from hurting. Spider-Verse piggy bagging to one side, I also hate the artstyle in general as everyone looked like melted action figures; particularly the faces that looked lopsided for some reason.

One thing I took note of with the 1990's movie was very specific pulp culture jokes. The kind that maybe your dad would understand, but unfortunately date the movie instantly. With Mutant Mayhem, take that feeling and multiply it by a thousand as it contains very terrible and forced references in order to appeal to the kids. It feels like an old person glanced at Youtube for five minutes and said "yeah, this is what the kids are into!" while failing to understand it entirely. The truly sad bit is the references they've picked would fly over the heads of a younger audience. Between the cringey Shrek reference, to literal cameos by Post Malone and Mr. Beast, it feels like Seth and co wrote this for themselves!

Case in point: The Turtles, for some reason, want to be Ferris Bueler. Yes, because the kids know what that is. Even I don't know what that is and I'm not the target demographic for this bullshit.

Random: It sounds to me like Seth Rogen made this up as he went along.
Di'Aniss: I mean, it's Seth. He probably smoked a fat one and said "yeah, that sounds fine!"

Random: Careful, Di. He may cry in an interview and say "You're being mean!"
Di'Aniss: He's making the mistake of thinking I care.

I can tell Seth wrote this because I don't think he's a very smart man. Care to explain to me Seth how you can have full fibre optic broadband IN THE FUCKING SEWER? I imagine his response would be "Hyehuhuhuhuhuhuhuhuh!! But how else are the Toiduls gunna have their product placement iPhones? Hyehhuhuhuhuhuhuh!" That's the best way I can summarise this movie: "Everything was either a reference or product placement."

I know this kind of shit would annoy Random (and I'd never hear the end of it) but there was a lot of things this movie did even I found to be stupid.

Splinter is a massive racist. It's explained why he hates humans, but if you swap out "humans" for any race, it instantly becomes a bit sus. He explains to the Turtles "you're so obsessed with the human world, so I went up there to see if we could fit in!" but was attacked by an angry mob - therefore he goes full Magneto on hating humanity! No relation to Hamata Yoshi. Just a regular rat in Brooklyn with a thick Chinese accent. I know you got THE Jackie Chan to play him, but come the fuck on.

Because Splinter had the shit kicked out of him, he decided to become a kung fu master. No prior knowledge or learning from his Master Yoshi. Just "saw Hong Kong movies and watched Youtube videos and said YES!" Literally, a Youtube video called "HOW TO NINJA!" It's about as fucking stupid as saying "Bruce Wayne became the Batman because he saw a fucking stream on Twitch of someone playing GTA3." Or Yoda goes on Facebook and finds a "JEDI HOW TO" post.

This movie has set the bar as low as a neckbeard basement.

As for the Turtles themselves: Leo was trying to be a sensible leader, but he's a taddletale and a complete wuss. Raph was a watered down version of previous versions, with a mix of his 1987 counterpart and something of a co-leader. Mikey is still the super silly clown; to the point he wants to join a stand up comedy circuit. He's the youngest but has a deeper voice because reasons. Donnie is still the punching bag and subjected to another batch of nerd cliches. Silly glasses, girly voice and an even bigger wuss than Leo. A few cringey jabs at anime and k-pops, because "nerds, am I right?"

Also, they steal from stores. I thought there hold gimmick was to fight crime and beat up criminals - not emulate them?

There was never any time to contemplate the plot at hand. They were more interested in adding in more jokes and references than establish things. It wants to be sad and depressing, but jokes. They literally make the same Batman joke Michael Bay did in his shitty movies. Ontop of that, tThey kept repeating the same jokes over, and over, and over, and over again. One example was "a milking joke" Take a shot everytime they say the word milk. It wasn't funny the first 50 times you said it. Because of how cringey it became, my friend Kari and I had to constantly look away from the screen, turn to each other and mutter "oh God why?"

I know the Internet cares about this next topic, but I personally don't. However, let's talk about April.

She's basically a Jen Eric while talking like a nonchalant teenager and blazay about everything. In other words, she's "what a boardroom think how kids talk, but clearly sounds more like a middle-aged millenial." She wants to sell their life story to boost her career because she's a cliched loser with no friends (That tired old chestnut). The reason she's unpopular is because she puked live on air. Her classmates call her "Puke-Girl" and "April O'Puke." I lose sympathy with her because she manipulates the Turtles for her own selfish reasons. She an unlikeable character that puts people in danger all for the sake of a story, but predictably changes her ways by the end which comes across as half-hearted.

As for our main villain, Superfly's plan is to "kill all humans" with yet another skybeam and the plot from Amazing Spider-Man 1. So when Michael Bay did this, it's BAD. Yet with Seth Rogen it's good? Da fuck? He's also aided by the other side-characters until the Turtles convince them to live in their sewer with their wifi and pizza, whereas Superfly basically says "you're all a bunch of incepid twats! You can't let a sappy speech sway your dumbasses!" I was Superfly in that moment.

They all turn on Superfly to stop him from destroying the world, yet he oneshots them until Splinter arrives. Superfly tries to give Splinter that tiresome "you and I are the same" speech but gets his shit kicked in by everyone. This leads to Superfly's death, until he comes back as a giant kaiju by merging with sea creatures and zoo animals - Leading to this exchange.

Di: Wait, why does he have horses for legs?
Kari: From the horses in the zoo.
Di: Zoos don't have horses!
Kari:

Through the power of friendship, Superfly dies... except not really for he's in the post-credit scene. Oh and Shredder's name dropped. I'd be more descript about that, but I'm kinda tired of talking about this now.

(Conclusion).
I walked out of that cinema wishing I could get that time back. The movie exists but it I cannot say I'll ever give this a second viewing. Maybe if I was a Turtles fan, I'd be more invested, but if you gave me a choice of watching a movie likes this, or staring at a wall for 2 hours, I'd happily choose the wall.

You may enjoy it, but I can't say I did.