I got a chance to see an early showing today of the new animation film, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem. The Turtles have had many feature films in their franchise over the years, but this is the first time we get a full length animated film.

The Turtles were young teens who were craving to be above ground and out of the sewers among the humans despite their father, Splinter (Jackie Chan), hating the humans. The Turtles decided to attempt to stop major criminal Superfly (Ice Cube) so the world would see them as heroes instead of monsters.

There was quite a large and very accomplished group of voice actors involved along with the couple that I have already mentioned. These voice actors included Nicholas Cantu, Brady Noon, Micha Abbey and Shamon Brown Jr (who were the Turtles) and John Cena, Seth Rogan, Paul Rudd, Ayo Edebiri, Rose Byrne, Giancarlo Esposito, Maya Rudolph, Post Malone, Hannibal Buress, and Natasia Demetriou.

The best part of this new film is clearly the animation style. The film must have been inspired by the Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse films, Mutant Mayhem has amazing artistic frames with bright colors and awesome backgrounds. I did have some problems with the fight animations, especially in the third act big battle because they had so many mutants involved (as well as other characters) that it felt like it was difficult to see what was happening. It reminded me of some of the big battles in Transformers franchises at times.

One of the things that I really enjoyed was the idea that the Turtles were actually portrayed as teenagers. This is something that they have never really done before and this was a new take on these characters because of it.

The story of the movie was okay, but it was not the standout aspect of this film. There was some good humor and the film re-contextualized these characters for a new generation. It ended on a perfect note for a sequel too.

4 stars