Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie Parent Guide

With Earth on the verge of defeat at the hands (or, rather, tentacles) of the vicious alien Krangs, the Ninja Turtles use their mystic powers to send Casey Jones (Haley Joel Osment) back in time to prevent the Foot Clan from opening the portal that allowed the Krang to invade Earth. But the turtles Casey meets aren’t the cool, capable, composed ninjas who trained him – they’re a bunch of bickering teenagers with superpowers. Although they manage to steal the key from the Foot Clan, the turtles are too late to stop them from opening the portal, and in the fight to close it again, the Krang kidnap Raphael (Omar Benson Miller). Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Donatello (Ben Schwartz, Brandon Mychal Smith, and Josh Brener) are desperate to get their brother back, but if they’re going to beat the Krang, they must learn to work together. Hopefully with some help from their master, Splinter (Eric Bauza) and intrepid reporter April O’Neil (Kat Graham), they can find a way to save Raph, stop the aliens, and protect the Earth. All in a day’s work for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!

If this story seems to be moving pretty fast, that’s because this isn’t a stand-alone movie. It’s a continuation of the animated Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles TV series, which wrapped up after two seasons in 2020. While you don’t need to watch the show to understand what’s happening, I assume it fleshes out the characters and relationships in much greater detail than this 82 minute kids’ movie. On the other hand, your kids are unlikely to care about character depth, and they’re who this movie is made for.

This animated flick is not impossible to watch as an adult (and it’s far less annoying than I anticipated) but it’s clearly geared at a younger audience. The animation style is very cartoonish, and the characters are pretty goofy. Given that, the intensity of violence in the film surprised me. It’s not the fights: the slapstick action is on par with the (far more complex) fights in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. The issue here is that the Krang transform people into monsters – and the unfortunate people being “monsterfied” by the aliens scream the whole time. It’s darker and scarier content than you’d expect from entertainment with a TV-Y7 rating.

On the other hand, there’s only one use of mild profanity, and no sexual content or substance abuse – unless you consider eating pizza for every meal in a sewer a form of substance abuse. It certainly can’t be good for you, but the turtles seem to be in fine shape regardless. Maybe they’re born with it, maybe it’s the exposure to radioactive ooze. Either way, no amount of greasy pizza is going to slow down this fast-paced junior action romp.