So the film has a very distinct unity between its look and its overall attitude, especially its agreeably dopey sense of humor.Īnyway, having an aesthetic program is one thing, successfully executing it is another, and Mutant Mayhem is pretty damn successful - all the more impressive since this isn't coming from any sort of pedigreed animation studio. Which feels both hyper-specific and not, but at any rate, it's definitely a vibe, and it's the exact vibe that Rogen and Goldberg have made careers out of. In this case, that genre is "notebook sketches made by a kid who is just completely checked out from school and has a fairly stunted and immature sense of what's 'cool', but has enough artistic talent to make it look pretty neat anyway".
But whereas The Last Wish took at that about as far as ".so, we can sometimes use a lower frame-rate?", Mutant Mayhem has a much more comprehensive visual scheme in mind, starting as Into the Spider-Verse did with a specific genre of graphic arts as its guiding principle. This is, after 2022's Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, the second major American animated feature that it's basically impossible to imagine existing without the trailblazing work done by Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse in 2018, demonstrating that you can actually have, like, an aesthetic with computer animation. No slight to the kids: I also just watch stuff because it's brightly colored, and Mutant Mayhem happens to look pretty damn great. Just about the only era of popular culture from the last 40 years that I don't think gets a reference is the one we're presently living in, the one that would be comprehensible to the children who are the film's stated target audience, but you know kids, they just watch stuff because it's brightly colored. Part of the charm of Mutant Mayhem - and, if I am being mercilessly honest, part of what's annoying about it as well - is that it tries to give equal time to nostalgia for every era of children who grew up on the Turtles, be they from the '80s, the '90s, the '00s, or the '10s.
But not solely enthusiasm based in nostalgia for the 1987-'96 television cartoon Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which I think still probably counts as the definitive incarnation of the franchise in the popular imagination. the Machines - are also a bunch of '90s Kids™, so the whole thing feels pretty unmistakably like it comes from a place of fanboyish enthusiasm. And the rest of the main creative team - the other writers include Dan Hernandez & Benji Samit and Jeff Rowe, the last of whom makes his solo directing debut here after having co-directed The Mitchells vs. It also helps that Mutant Mayhem is secretly a Seth Rogen/Evan Goldberg film as much as it's anything else - they represent two-fifths of the credited writers, and two-thirds of the producers - and there's always been a strong vein of thick, meaty nostalgia for the pop culture of the late '80s and early '90s in Rogen & Goldberg's work. It helps, I am sure, that for only the second time (following 2007's TMNT), we get a fully-animated version of these comic book characters in a theatrical film, so there's no need to worry about overly weighty suits or weightless CGI. Still, it's a testimony to how doggedly this somewhat generic franchise has somehow clung to life for nearly four decades that we can be this far along into its lifespan without having hit the ceiling for quality.
This isn't such a big deal as all that, given that there's also an argument to be made that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is the first time in seven features that one of them has been actually "good" in the first place.
#Neat dude tv#
There's a very strong argument to be made that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is the best feature film yet made featuring the titular comic book superheroes, TV cartoon stars, and best-selling toys.
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