Review of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (2023) by Butterballer1 — 05 Aug 2023

The animation is not to my taste, but that's just a minor personal gripe compared to the rest of the problems. Whoever wrote this film is clearly on cocaine and highly ADHD. I appreciate that this film actually does occasionally try to have morals, but it runs over them so badly and so quickly with incessant jokes, endless pop references that will be entirely irrelevant 5 minutes after you leave the theater, and characters who constantly talk over one another.

It is annoying and sometimes makes you want to tune out. The writers clearly understand this, but rather than write a better script with better actors who properly suit each role, they just spell out the message to the viewer so there is absolutely no thinking required.

And, yes, of course, there was vast deference paid to DEI ESG scoring over substance and drama and archetypes and character. They check all the woke boxes (is Splinter really gay now with no actual martial arts training beyond youtube videos? Did I see that wrong?) and it leaves no time to breathe or write a story that will be remembered the way the 1989 film is remembered.

This is like a rollercoaster that keeps wobbling and banging into things and just keeps speeding up and going on rather than fixing the shoddy tracks and engineering. They already got your money so they don't care if you jump off the ride.