Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem Parent Guide

When a sample of mysterious mutagenic ooze slips into a New York City sewer grate it finds plenty of material to work with – namely, four baby turtles and a rat. The rat, now called Splinter (Jackie Chan), is distrustful of humans, so he teaches the turtles, Leonardo (Nicolas Cantu), Raphael (Brady Noon), Donatello (Micah Abbey), and Michelangelo (Shamon Brown Jr.) martial arts he learned on the internet. The turtles, in turn, are excellent students and quickly pick up a dangerous set of skills. The problem? They’re teenagers.

As if raising mutant ninja turtles weren’t difficult enough, Splinter must to manage their desire to get out of their cozy sewer and see the human world. On a grocery run, they meet aspiring reporter April O’Neil (Ayo Edebiri), who’s working to track down an elusive criminal called Superfly (Ice Cube). With the turtles’ help, she could blow the story open, and the turtles could use the publicity to be accepted as heroes in the human world at large – if they survive, that is.

The hard-shelled buddies are facing two serious problems. First, it turns out that dangerous criminals tend to be, well, dangerous. Second, the corporation that created the mutagenic ooze in the first place is interested in getting their property back. Even if that property consists of four sentient turtles and a lonely rat…

This movie has been hugely successful in grabbing on to the “teenage” part of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The protagonists are a bunch of fast-talking, impatient, unstable, and vaguely feral critters who’ve taken up crime fighting as an extracurricular activity, and they’re actually pretty endearing. I’m curious if actual teenagers would feel the same way, or if this is just my ancient conception of what the youth are like these days – the theater audience seemed mostly to consist of kids; not teens.

I think the demographic this production is aiming for is early teens and pre-teens, maybe a few younger kids scattered around for variety. The content certainly suits a younger group, since apart from a little mild cussing and some sub-Marvel levels of violence, there’s not much for parents to worry about. There are some frightening moments, but the film doesn’t take itself very seriously and even the scarier scenes are full of comic relief.

I had more fun than I expected with this family flick. I figured it would be another mediocre, high-speed kids’ cartoon and I’d spend the runtime vaguely irritated – not so. This production boasts a fun art style, distinctive visual aesthetic, and dynamic animation with a textured feel. Along with some excellent voice acting, this makes Mutant Mayhem a pretty good time even for us old fogeys in the audience – provided we can keep up with roughly four thousand pop-culture references per hour.