After months of avoiding the film, I finally watched Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, and it was good.
While I accept that the Turtles are constantly evolving and that each iteration is different, I drew the line at The Rise of The Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles series when it got too different. It also didn’t help that getting the Nickelodeon series was much more complicated than the series before it.
Mutant Mayhem changed the Turtles further, but it was easier to swallow.
It didn’t mean that the changes were easy to accept at first. Some of the contemporary American media tendencies were still bitter. They can’t help themselves, I guess. Just don’t think too hard about it.
Because of this, I hope that someday Nickelodeon will produce one of those anime anthologies of the Turtles, as others have done for The Matrix, Batman, and Star Wars.
The story is compelling, and the pacing is good. There are predictable (but acceptable) and unpredictable highs and lows, while not all scenes are punctuated with snarky remarks or jokes. All in all, it makes for a fun time.
For those who are new to the Turtles, none of this is an issue, and looking back at their past incarnations would be more jarring.
Mutant Mayhem looked excellent with its stylised 3D animation that was made to look like stop motion and hand-drawn art.
The music and sound design blend into the film and don’t pop out like a marketing and merchandising opportunity, which makes it good.
Compared to other Turtles movies, I like Mutant Mayhem better than The Rise Of The Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie and all live-action Turtle movies except for the first one and Out Of The Shadows. It’s fun, it’s light, and it’s for fans and those who are new to the Turtles alike.
Azizul Rahman Ismail 