This review is really late because I started it like a month ago and then just forgot to finish it. But since then I’ve watched this movie two more times, which should make it clear what I think. Spoilers for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, not that it’s really a movie that can be spoiled. It’s fairly straightforward in terms of plot. It’s a kid’s movie! The reason you should see this, as I’ll detail below, is because the animation and the cast and the jokes are all top-notch.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem stars Micah Abbey, Shamon Brown Jr., Nicolas Cantu, Brady Noon, Ayo Edebiri, Jackie Chan, Maya Rudolph, Giancarlo Esposito, Ice Cube, John Cena, Seth Rogen, Paul Rudd, Rose Byrne, Post Malone, Hannibal Buress, and Natasia Demetriou. Also Mr. Beast is in this. I know that’s not technically the name of his channel. I don’t care. The screenplay was written by Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, Jeff Rowe, Dan Hernandez, Benji Samit, and Brendan O’Brien. The movie was directed by Jeff Rowe and Kyle Spears. The turtles and this universe was created originally by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird.

I’ve never been a big TMNT fan. Not out of disinterest with the characters or the concepts, just never really watched or read a lot of any of it. I have seen the two live-action ones that Michael Bay produced, which were terrible from memory, and Will Arnett played a guy named Vern. I do love the design of the turtles. Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird originally came up with the idea when they were just hanging out and doodling in their sketchbooks. They liked anthropomorphic animals and Daredevil comics and they threw a few words together and boom- instant success. The original origin of the turtles was even tied into that of Daredevil’s, to sort of directly pay homage to the comic they got their ideas from.
Matt Murdock got his powers by pushing an old man out of the way of a truck full of toxic chemicals. The chemicals splashed onto him and blinded him. Meanwhile, the contents of another one of those barrels of chemicals spilled onto four turtles sitting by a sewer grate, turning them into human-shaped and sized turtles. Coincidentally, the boy and the four turtles grow up to independently have their own ninja-themed adventures. Murdock learns to fight from his human mentor, Stick, and the turtles learn to fight from their anthropomorphic rat mentor, Splinter. And Stick and Splinter both lead their respective vigilante mentees in lifelong battles against a never-ending army of darkness; Daredevil fights “The Hand” and the turtles fight “The Foot Clan”.
It’s such a weird coincidence that the same toxic waste gave a small child heightened senses and turned four turtles into sentient turtle/human hybrids while simultaneously giving all five victims the inner urge to become ninjas. It may sound like I’m being sarcastic and I think this is all stupid, but I love when comics people do stuff like this. So anyway, I kinda like the turtles but I knew Seth Rogen and all these comedians I love wrote and starred in the movie so I was looking forward to this.

What’s the movie about?
The four turtle brothers, who were splashed with mutating ooze, met a rat and mutated him too. He grew a funny hairstyle and then tried to take the turtles into the real world, but that didn’t go well and the humans thought they were monsters and so the rat, Splinter, ran back into the sewers with his sons to become super racist towards humans. And rightfully so. In an attempt to guard his sons from the dangers of humanity, he trains them in the art of martial arts and they all become ninja teenagers that very much want to be a part of the real world.
After meeting high school reporter April O’Neil and saving her from goons, they decide to help April track down the supervillain known as Superfly in the hopes that being heroes will make the humans accept them. Eventually they meet Superfly(Ice Cube) and his fellow mutants, Beebop(Seth Rogen), Rocksteady(John Cena), Mondo Gecko(Paul Rudd), Leatherhead(Rose Byrne), Wingnut(Natasia Demetriou), Genghis Frog(Hannibal Buress), and Ray Fillet(Post Malone). What I enjoy about all of that is that this is a gang of villains that all have different abilities and personalities. We don’t get those often. All I want to see in a Marvel movie is someone fighting the Masters of Evil, the anti-Avengers.
I will say, there’s a lot going on in this and all the villains kind of jumble together in the noise of it all. The same thing happens with the turtles themselves, because they’re often talking over each other. But that works, I think. Anyway, the turtles fight Superfly and his gang to stop him from killing all the humans and making mutants the rulers of Earth. Eventually they get captured by Cynthia Utrom’s (Maya Rudolph) goons and then they get rescued and the other mutants turn against Superfly because they don’t hate humans and they like the turtles and they all force Superfly into a big fat of mutagen ooze that spills off into the water where he mutates into a whale/fly hybrid. And then he swims over to a nearby zoo and absorbs those animals and becomes a weird giant multi-animal mutant kaiju. The design of this giant version of him is fantastic because, again, unlike your average comic book movie, they didn’t just make Superfly a bigger version of himself. His main body is a whale, his legs are made out of horses, he has an elephant for a nose and a giant claw. Each aspect of his body looks different in terms of texture. Again, cannot stress how beautiful this movie looks!
The turtles and the other mutants fight him but the humans think they’re with Superfly and also monsters until April O’Neil runs into a semi-abandoned News Station and completes her narrative arc involving acid reflux issues while convincing humanity to love and rally behind the turtles with the power of accurate journalism. And then when Splinter and the turtles are too injured, humanity comes in to help them all stop Superfly in an amped-up version of the climax Amazing Spider-Man where all of New York’s crane operators banded together to help Spidey get across New York. The turtles win and save the day and get to go to school with regular humans while also gaining a family of mutants that I think are meant to be villains usually but who cares. And Cynthia Utrom(Still played by Maya Rudolph), not one to accept defeat, decides that while the turtles will be harder to attack due to their sudden popularity and public presence, sending Shredder after them might do the trick. Shredder is the turtles’ nemesis. He’s got a cool design too.

Favorite Bits/One Minor Nitpick
These are the little things that popped out at me.
– The soundtrack is mostly 90’s rap/hip hop, which really works for the tone of the movie. The turtles were created in the 90’s and that’s when they were most popular, so it’s fitting.
– Jackie Chan is unbelievably hilarious in this. I need to watch more movies with him in them. There’s an action sequence towards the end of the movie where he takes down a bunch of guys while improvising different things to use to hit them with, and it seems like they really tried to put his real life fighting style into the character. I loved him in this so much.
– There’s a great montage fight sequence in this that looks a lot like a side-scrolling arcade game, and it was really fun.
– The one downside of having so many villains is that a lot of them kind of fell into the background and weren’t given much to do or many lines. John Cena, Rose Byrne, and Hannibal Buress in particular. Giancarlo Esposito was also in this as Baxter Stockman, and he dies at the beginning. I figured he’d have an act two “I’M ALIVE!!!” fakeout, seeing as how he’s Giancarlo Esposito and surely they wouldn’t bring him in just to die. But it seems they did. Seth Rogen doesn’t do much in this voice-wise either, but he wrote it. Paul Rudd and Natasia Demetriou have a bit more lines than the others, which I appreciated. And to be clear, all of these very funny people were great in these roles, I just like seeing more of them.
– UPDATE: To revise that nitpick slightly, I’d like to say on rewatch that they all get about as much time in this movie as they could have, considering, and I don’t think anyone was wasted. Maybe Giancarlo though.
– My favorite scene in this whole thing is a car chase where the turtles steal a truck from Superfly set to “What’s Up?” by The 4 Non-Blondes. I love that song and I really enjoyed watching a bunch of mutant animals sing along and then chase after one another.
– It’s a funny movie.

Was there enough Paul Rudd in this?
There never is, no matter what movie we’re talking about.

Overall Rating: 9.5/10(I’ll get into it more when I do the ranking of all the superhero movies of the year, but this movie is incredible. For my money, this and Across The Spider-Verse are easily the best two comic book movies of the year. Not that the live-action ones that have come out so far are strong competitors.)
Rudd Rating: 9/10(He’s somehow very believable as a skateboarding obsessed mutated gecko.)

The Post-Review Check-In: Where Will Paul Rudd Be Next?
I haven’t done this before, but I thought I’d give an update on his future projects. I spend a lot of time looking at his upcoming roles on IMDb. So obviously there are multiple strikes going on and movies aren’t really being made right now. But Paul Rudd is a busy guy. Before the strike happened he was filming the sequel to Ghostbusters: Afterlife, which has now been delayed. And he had just signed on to The Invite, a movie where he’s married to Amy Adams and their neighbors, one of them played by Rosario Dawson, invites them to an orgy or something. That is also, I assume, on pause.
Only Murders in the Building season three, however, was completed before the strike and premiered yesterday. He’s a big part of this season, and I plan to do a Ruddtrospective on season three after it ends. His most recently announced upcoming project is Death of a Unicorn, an A24 movie that will be allowed to film during the strike. A24 has already reached agreements with SAG-AFTRA and all of the actors in it have signed waivers so they can work during the strike as well, since A24 is following Union guidelines. So Death of a Unicorn, which I’m very excited for, is said to be a horror/comedy about a father and daughter(Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega respectively) who accidentally run over a unicorn with their car and, upon realizing that its blood has restorative properties, brings the unicorn to a secluded house to see the rich head of a pharmaceutical company. From there they debate what to do next. As a huge fan of Paul Rudd, I appreciate that he’s doing more weird comedies again. So yeah. That’s all the Paul Rudd news I have.

Hope you enjoyed the review! Thanks for reading!