With a TV series and five films over the past almost thirty years we now have another reboot of the comic superheroes with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Mutant Mayhem and its quite a radical reboot too at the hands of director Jeff Rowe whose previous film ‘The Mitchell’s vs the Machines’ was quite rightly Oscar nominated.
With frequent flashbacks to character origins this latest film sees the four renaissance artist named turtles still staying out of sight in the sewer indoctrinated by their sensei Splinter (Jackie Chan) whose distrust of humans is explained in another flashback. But the turtles are keen to get out there and fight villains and here it’s a mutant jive talking super fly (impressively voiced by Ice Cube) along with a number of other mutated animals created by lunatic scientist Baxter Stockman ( Giancarlo Esposito) whose work is broken up by Cynthia Utrom (Maya Rudolph) a name that TMNT fans know only too well. And its Superfly whose plans to turn Stockman’s ooze onto other animals bastardizing their DNA and rendering them almost unrecognisable in a manner not dissimilar to a before and after of Amanda Holden entering and leaving the BGT make up room
Written by self-avowed fan Seth Rogen with his regular collaborator Evan Goldberg along with three others and their version of the superheroes has a number of inspired moments and does take it all back to the comic books and yet at the same time there’s something familiar about all this. The four turtles are still interchangeable but there’s far more emphasis on the ‘teenage’ aspect of the film’s title.
But whilst the story is nothing out of the ordinary what really raises this is the animation style. Rendered in a kind of scratchy street graffiti hand drawn manner it’s a refreshing and much needed shift away from what has become a generic CGI Pixar style of so many animated feature films today and again the change in style is what raised ‘Spiderman Into the Spiderverse’ above other animated features and Jeff Rowe has applied a style that should shake up the franchise and ensure at least one film which is hinted at in a the now obligatory mid titles credits.
related feature: The Mitchells vs the Machines – NETFLIX review
related feature: Ninja demonstration at premiere of ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Out of the Shadows’
WATCH the TMNT producer introducing the film in London HERE…..
Here’s the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Mutant Mayhem trailer….
