Mutant Mayhem (2023) and Its Grotesque Rizz

A mockup of a YouTube-style thumbnail or video frame. The background is composed of a simple collage of three still frames—The first and largest is from the 2023 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem film: It is a close-up of a label for a “MEGA MILKER-2000” machine; the second, much smaller and positioned at the top left corner of the frame, is from the TV series Back at the Barnyard, specifically from the 2008 episode “Animal Farmers,” and it depicts the main male cow character, Otis, reacting with open-mouthed discomfort or shock to the feel of a milking machine attached to his udder; the third still is similarly small and positioned at the top right corner but also comes from Mutant Mayhem and depicts three of the Turtles reacting with apparent surprise or shock, with their mouths open and arms either raised or outstretched. Since that final image has been flipped horizontally, it creates the impression that they are responding to the shot of Otis and/or the rest of the combined image. In the foreground, on the right side of the frame, a hand-drawn rendition of the fourth Turtle (Leonardo) wears an expression of disgust or anger as he looks at the audience. Along the bottom of the image, there is a YouTube-like title and logo: “MILK machine MILKED ME??” (with dramatic all caps use and double question marks at the end) on the left and “OOZTube” (with radioactive green “ooz” and a droplet icon) on the right.

My personal relationship with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles brand is a weird one: On the one hand, I closely associate them with my childhood thanks to the 2003 animated series, which felt/feels like a staple of my Saturday morning TV-watching—and I more routinely than one might think remember an episode that I hope actually exists where the Turtles employed meditation while adrift in space to prevent themselves from using up their oxygen—but, on the other hand, I don’t think I could call myself a fan given my overall lack of contact/interest, despite the fact that I was one of the eight or so people who enjoyed the 2016 Mutants in Manhattan video game (and played the shell out of it). (And give or take the 2007 TMNT film and the video game based on it.) The 2023 Mutant Mayhem caught my attention when I saw a clip of Splinter’s solo fight from late in the movie posted on Twitter. Although somewhat visually reminiscent of the influential Spider-Verse movies (2018/2023), which I have pretentiously already decided is passé, after a few rounds of imitation, it still caught my eye because of the fun fight choreography and some un-Spider-Verse-like quirks.

The animation and character designs of Mutant Mayhem conspire to give the movie an almost claymation-esque look, a real physicality, like you could reach into the screen, pluck out a figure of your choice, and put them right on your shellf. The crafty look extends to certain textures and effects, like the skin of the Turtles and explosions, which have a noticeably hand-drawn quality to them at times. At the risk of leaning on too little Turtle knowledge, this may be one of the pieces of TMNT media that best captures the indie grubbiness and even grotesquerie of the original comics. It’s not a one-to-one match but more so spiritually accurate: As much as I feel a certain closeness with the 2003 series, it is exceptionally clean- and conventional-looking by contrast.

Those Turtles are muscular, big, superheroic, uncannily human figures with pumpkin-shaped, ostensibly reptilian faces mounted on their necks like costumery. Meanwhile, their Mutant Mayhem counterparts continue the trend(?) of giving each brother a more distinct silhouette, and it also renders them simultaneously squat and gangly. (Goblincore.) This is broadly also true of every other character in the film, human or otherwise. It massively contributes to the indie-y, comic-y vibe I mentioned before and also facilitates a certain “goopy” approach to visuals and humor that makes this discussion of the film a weirdly appropriate follow-up to the last thing I wrote about a different Nickelodeon-associated movie, the 2006 Barnyard: The Original Party Animals, which had similarly gremlinian, uncomfy vibes, with its be-uddered male cows and creepy humans. I indulged in the supposed shock of it all for most of that little piece but then came clean in the end: “[W]hile the visual style is grotesque. . . . kids love weird and messed-up-looking stuff. . . .” A great example of this design working its magic in Mutant Mayhem is how a repeated joke about the Turtles being… “milked” by humans doesn’t come off as excessive/ill-fitting because it is in harmony with the Look of the movie. Ditto how this version of April O’Neil comedy vomits on-camera a couple of times, the first time in an excessive fashion. This would not “work” if the characters didn’t look like they do—if April was the bombshell some complainers wanted her to be.

And here’s a bit more of a potential reach: The fact that even the humans of the film look like mutants works well thematically and narratively as the two groups eventually come together in the finale. All along, they were not so different (at least visually), and the self-segregation and/or world domination proposed by Turtle mentor-father Splinter and his antagonistic counterpart, respectively, were not actually justified. (No longer a sweet little critter nor a properly-proportioned Adult—Were we not all, at one point in time, “teenaged” “mutant” “turtles”?) There’s a big-ness to the action climax that was surprisingly functional to me. There are a lot of mutant characters introduced in the film that all have to play a role along with the Turtles, Splinter, April, and other assorted human New Yorkers, but it doesn’t end up feeling like we skipped some theoretical other installment in a series or like there’s too much going on. In this way, it reminds me of the first Spider-Verse in a positive way—That movie was similarly coherently stuffed. I came away happy with the amount of character (in more than one sense of the word) onscreen. This is partly due, in Mutant Mayhem, to some infectiously charismatic performances. Ice Cube’s villainous Superfly was a standout for me. The character’s appearance, writing, and the vocal performance all manage to successfully balance humor and credible menace. Some of his more casual-sounding utterances when he becomes a chimeric titan amalgamation of various animals for the climactic confrontation just charmed me because of the obvious juxtaposition: He’s sort of just a dude despite his massive size (and legs made of horses).

A still frame from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem “Official Trailer”—Against a more or less black background of nothing in particular are the words, in all caps, “FROM PERMANENT TEENAGER SETH ROGEN.”
To quote my review of the erotic thriller Miller's Girl (2024), "I'm sure Seth Rogen is a consummate professional. . . ."

The fact that the writing is good in Mutant Mayhem is a bit of a surprise given that it credits four different people with the “Story” and five with the screenplay. I’m not some sort of auteurism obsessive, but I do subscribe to a vague philosophy of “too many cooks” re. the writing of… anything. On that note, pretending to identify some element of a singular style in such a morass feels inherently silly, and yet there is part of me that likes to imagine a certain, discernible Seth Rogen-ish-ness (and/or Evan Goldberg-ism) in the writing. It’s apparent with, I think, the way the Turtles chill and riff with one another. Nobody’s holding a joint, but there’s a… smoky congeniality. I’d go so far as to say that the bits where the brothers are yapping are the highlight, not so unlike Adam Sandler’s Grown Ups movies (2010/2013). It’s just fun to be hanging out here, and it’s also an appropriately teenagery vibe.

Again, I’m not a TMNT savant, so here I go a’showing my ass, but: I enjoyed just how teenager-like and “modern” this iteration of the Turtles feels. They’ve got smartphones; they’re filming short-form video content dumbass-ing around with their weapons; they say “rizz” and “sus”; they’re extremely Wikipedia- or YouTube-brained in their wide-ranging, cross-generational pop culture references, and the fact that the anime/manga Attack on Titan is not just briefly referenced but is also a critical part of the plan to defeat the transformed Superfly gives the proceedings an especially contemporary, internet-soaked quality, to me. And the childishness and doofiness dovetail with the visuals to make such a satisfyingly cohesive whole. Any criticism of, say, April’s appearance or the Turtles’ use of not-so-timeless slang ignores the fact that this is such a complete package because all these elements are in harmony with one another, a fun bit of critical contrast given the metastatic Look at its pulsing, green, veiny center.

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