Weekend Watch - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem

                Welcome back to the Weekend Watch where each week we take a look at a new piece of film or television media and give it a rating and review. This week’s topic, as voted by the blog’s Instagram followers, is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, the latest reboot of the TMNT franchise, this time written and produced by Seth Rogen and written and directed by Jeff Rowe (of The Mitchells vs. the Machines and Gravity Falls fame). The film features the vocal talents of Micah Abbey, Shamon Brown Jr., Nicolas Cantu, and Brady Noon as the four titular turtles, joined by the likes of Jackie Chan, Ayo Edebiri, Maya Rudolph, John Cena, Paul Rudd, Ice Cube, Hannibal Burress, Seth Rogen, Rose Byrne, Natasia Demetriou, Giancarlo Esposito, and Post Malone to fill out the rest of the mutant and human cast. The film opened last weekend to surprisingly high reviews but middling box office returns. Let’s get into it.

Letter Grade: A-; this is quite possibly the best Ninja Turtles content that’s ever been produced, and it deserves recognition for also being some really high-quality animation too.

Review:

                In a not-so-surprising turn of events, filmmakers have finally found a non-muppet-based winning formula for a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film, and that formula is to lean harder on those first two words than they do on the third one. Mutant Mayhem delivers what its title promises – more mutants than expected and some truly wild and crazy fight scenes utilizing them. It also brings with it a healthy dose of heart, humor, and authenticity (strange in an animated film about mutant turtles, I know) that wins the day for the film, making it my second-favorite animated film of the year so far.

                By leaning into the teenage and mutant aspects of the quartet of heroes, Mutant Mayhem sets itself apart in a fun, humorous, and heartfelt way from its predecessors. Featuring references to memes and pop culture that current 15-year-olds would reference and talk about, leaning into the archetypes of the four turtles and how they actually translate to real teens, and centering around the turtles’ desire for acceptance allows the film to follow the familiar beats of a high school comedy with plenty of mutant ninja action connecting its pieces together. In a lot of ways, this film feels more like the successor to Sky High or The Lego Movie in the ways that it blends realness with humor, action, and fantasy than it does a successor to the TMNT films of the 90s or even the television shows of the 2000s and 10s, and that’s a good thing.

                Mutant Mayhem also follows in the footsteps of its more recent predecessors – Into the Spider-Verse, The Mitchells vs. the Machines, and Across the Spider-Verse – by delivering some great animation, comedy for kids and adults, and some all-time needle drops to tie it all together. Where Disney and Pixar have embraced animation that blends realistic textures and images with fantastical settings, Sony and Paramount have stepped into this realm of stylized animation, with Sony copying comic book panels and art styles in its animated Spider-Man films and Paramount putting on displays of 2-dimensional meets 3-dimensional in a way that showcases the realness of the world in science fiction settings. In TMNT, that looks like oddly misshapen but highly detailed human faces, grungy buildings that match the sewers below, and mutants that look like monsters but still have hearts of gold. This animation carries over into the action sequences backed by some great songs, all of which feel fun, original, and well-directed for the target audience while still keeping the non-kids in the room happy.

                The only true knock against Mutant Mayhem (and reason why it doesn’t receive a higher rating) is that its stakes never get high enough to induce that high-octane thrill that the action scenes deserve. There’s great action front to back, but you never feel like the outcome of the fights is in question. Even when they get down, the turtles and their allies never quite stay down long enough to get you worried that they won’t be getting back up again. The downs don’t hit quite as hard as the ups, and they are overcome a bit too easily for the film to feel fully earned. I still love it and had a great time watching it, but I wish that the stakes had felt more dire. There’s enough humor to warrant a few more down moments, but they don’t come, so here the film sits at an A- with potential for an A+ somewhere (probably) on the cutting floor.

                Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem comes through on its promises of mutants, mayhem, teens, turtles, and ninja action in a glorious way, with plenty of heart and humor to carry it over the finish line, even if its stakes never quite get to a dire point that leaves you on the edge of your seat. Hopefully, the film does well enough to get the sequel that it deserves (and maybe a solid TMNT trilogy for once) because it really is a great time at the theater and so much better than anyone was giving it credit for going in.

Weekend Watch - The Super Mario Bros. Movie

                Welcome back to the Weekend Watch where each week we take a look at a new piece of film or television media and give it a rating, review, and recommendation. This week’s topic, as voted by the blog’s Instagram followers, is The Super Mario Bros. Movie, the latest animated release from Illumination studios. The film is an adaptation of the Super Mario Bros. IP from Nintendo, featuring the voice talents of Chris Pratt, Charlie Day, Anya Taylor-Joy, Jack Black, Keegan-Michael Key, Seth Rogen, and Fred Armisen as Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, Bowser, Toad, Donkey Kong, and Cranky Kong respectively. The film hit theaters on Wednesday and is projected to hit nearly $200 million at the box office in its opening weekend, one of the biggest of the year. Let’s get into it.

Letter Grade: C-; the film provides excellent nostalgia and references to the IP, but that doesn’t mean that it’s free of any other flaws.

Should you Watch This Film? Maybe, if you’ve got kids, this is going to be a solid watch for them, particularly if they struggle with attention spans; if you don’t, I’m not sure that the nostalgia and references do enough for me to recommend it to you.

Why?

                The Super Mario Bros. Movie is one of those films that pours most of its effort into making references and keeping the action moving with very little story to speak of. The nostalgia factor is huge, and they have done a great job capturing the fun of Mario with creative platforming, a race down Rainbow Road, a fight with Donkey Kong, and plenty of musical cues to take you back to your days of playing the games yourself (they do play the “DK Rap”, and I might have ascended to heaven when it came on). Even the majority of the needle drops in the film work to enhance the scene they are part of without taking you out of it too much.

                The voice cast has done a solid job of capturing the characters they play, and no one really feels out of place. Are Mario and Luigi’s accents still of indeterminate Italian origin? Yes, but their less cartoonish nature allows the characters to go through their more emotional beats without feeling too out of place. Anya Taylor-Joy’s Peach is fine, leaning more into the recent iterations of a fully capable Peach who just gets captured due to obligations of her station rather than helplessness. Keegan-Michael Key lends a bit of fun to Toad, blending the memeable vocals with his own to make the character fit in with the story’s other heroes. Seth Rogen’s Donkey Kong is really just Seth Rogen in video game form, but that works for what he’s asked to do – be the goofy, overconfident side hero. The film’s true vocal highlight comes in the form of Jack Black’s Bowser, who really takes on the most complex form of the character that we’ve ever seen. Indeed, Black’s portrayal allows the character to be just as menacing as always while still having a sympathetic side that explains why they keep inviting him to things like races and parties for fun.

                Where the film’s entertainment value falters, though, is its story, or lack thereof. The characters are really just thrown from situation to situation, and the only character with any complex motivation is Bowser. Peach, Mario, and Luigi are all given moments of development, but most of those happen in the form of flashbacks or in the middle of fights when they hit that rock-and-a-hard-place moment that pushes them beyond their limits, more out of necessity than out of true growth. Even the film’s plot unfolds in the form of random location jumps and convenient devices that allow them to throw in another video game reference. To quote another review that I read, the film’s plot is “Paper Mario thin”, which is actually not the most accurate statement, since the Paper Mario games actually have some of the most complex plots of any Mario game. In response to defenses of the film’s lack of plot in the name of it being a kids’ movie or not having much to work with in the actual games, I have to point out that there are plenty of great films targeted at children that do have great stories to go along with them. Perhaps one of the best examples is The Lego Movie (2014), which has some of the best innovation of IP with little story to speak of while still being commercially successful and loved by adults and kids alike. I get that kids (and a lot of adults) don’t really ask much of their movies beyond simple entertainment value, but you can ask for more than this particular film gives in terms of story and still come in right around the hour and a half mark.

                The Super Mario Bros. Movie hits the mark with its referential material and its vocal cast but is heavily lacking in the story and message department, leaving it as a mixed bag for moviegoers. If you want to be part of the conversation this week or if you want to scratch that Mario movie itch, this is not the worst thing you could go see in theaters. Otherwise, I’d suggest waiting for it to hit streaming and calling for a better story in the next film (because a sequel is definitely coming).