Wednesday, August 9, 2023

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem

TMNT: Mutant Mayhem (2023)

96% on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 186 reviews)

Runtime: 99 minutes

Directed by: Jeff Rowe/Kyle Spears

Starring: Plenty of familiar voices, including some now controversial people and some I just loathe

From: Paramount/Nickelodeon

You know, modern comedies just aren't for me. I've mentioned this in other reviews but there are reasons why current examples of that genre are in essence never watched by me, as I usually don't find them funny. I had great concerns with how funny I would find this given how heavily Seth Rogen was involved in the production. Turns out, there was plenty of huge laughs from the big crowd I saw this w/ last night... personally, I am not a fan of “rambling, babbling humor”, characters talking over each other equaling “hilarity”, awkwardness being a source of jokes, or the apparent belief that I'm supposed to double over w/ laughter because the characters used some vomit-inducing modern words I refuse to even mention here & the Turtles have seen Adele in concert, not to mention play Forza Horizon!

That plus a story which in essence was yet ANOTHER tired plot we have gotten WAY too often in the past 15 years or so, and it took the strength of some other elements for me to give this a modest grade. Note that my opinion has nothing to do w/ this film's interpretation of April O'Neil. That controversy is pretty gross, typically because the biggest blowhards bellowing about it either are using what sounds like racist dog whistles to me or they think that character was “fat and ugly”... should you be saying that, grown man, about a girl in high school who apparently was 16 years old!

As someone who slavishly watched the OG cartoon as a kid and was taken to the first two movies on the big screen as a kid, I was disappointed that the “humor” was such a miss for me; I loathed a running “joke” this had, but the crowd disagreed. All the complaining aside, at least I can compliment the unique animated look this had & how grimy NYC looked. The score was impressive, because they somehow roped in Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross to do it; also, the soundtrack was either East Coast Hip Hop from the past or some deep cuts from other genres that I appreciated. Note that I was only bumfuzzled by the movie literally using a song cover from a MEME for a big scene. Yeah, that video is a classic... which really only works for the video the song was covered for!

Note that the presence of two actors who did not have a great July in the court of public opinion (Ice Cube, Jackie Chan) has nothing to do with my opinion. Neither did the presence of two others who I truly despise... Post Malone and MrBeast! At least I did not have to look at an Autotuned goof who has prison tattoos on his face or some grifter who gamed the YouTube algorithm and thinks it's a good idea to have images on their videos where they are mouth-agape as if their IQ was below 85!

It's disappointing that I didn't like more about this when so many are... off their shells for it. I'll just shrug my shoulders and move on.

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