Movie Review Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem 

Directed by Jeff Rowe

Written by Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, Jeff Rowe, Dan Hernandez, Benji Samit 

Starring Micah Abbey, Shamon Brown Jr., Hannibal Burress, Rose Byrne, Nicolas Cantu, John Cena, Seth Rogen, Paul Rudd, Jackie Chan, Ice Cube, Post Malone

Release Date August 2nd, 2023 

Published August 6th, 2023 

I watched the 1990 live action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles recently for a review timed to the release of the latest attempt to rebuild the Turtles as a viable movie franchise. What I found was a movie that I absolutely loved. I was too old when Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was released in 1990, I was 14 and I thought it was for much younger kids. Look back now, with the wisdom of more than 30 years, I can say, yes, it is a product for young children, younger than 14 even, but it's a wonderful product. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1990 is a ridiculously fun movie. It's filled with wonderful invention and kid friendly action. 

Everything that came after that movie, not counting the television shows that I've never seen, has been a dreary slog. Each new film iteration of the Turtles has carried with it the very obvious burden of corporate exploitation. Each of the various filmmakers who tackled the franchise appeared to be doing so with a studio held gun to their head that dictated exactly how the movie should be geared toward selling merchandise and creating sequels was the only reason these movies existed. Thus, we got a series of joyless, unpleasant live action and animated attempts to leverage a popular I.P into a cash making machine. 

I say all of this to demonstrate the bias that the latest iteration of the Turtles on the big screen was up against in my mind. To say that I was cynical about seeing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on the big screen again would be a grave understatement. What a lovely surprise it is then to report that the newest Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles adventure, subtitled Mutant Mayhem, doesn't completely suck. In fact, it's actually pretty alright. The team of Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg and director-co-writer, Jeff Rowe have found a tone and spirit that does well to hide the high level corporately leveraged truth behind its creation. 

Mutant Mayhem is yet another Turtles origin story. We have the back story courtesy of a flashback to the origin of our antagonist, a fellow mutant named Superfly. Superfly was the creation of mad scientist Baxter Stockman. Baxter created the ooze but was killed not long after by an evil organization who wanted to steal his ooze and use it to create their own mutant army. A very young Superfly fought off the baddies, rescued his fellow mutant babies, and fled into the night. He left behind one last tube of ooze which breaks and drips into the sewer. There, it finds the Turtles who are rescued by Splinter (Jackie Chan) who gets into the ooze himself. 

Splinter is rightfully afraid of humans. His first time taking his turtle babies to the surface world nearly ends with them being killed. Thus, Splinter becomes deeply overprotective. He spends the next decade training his Turtles, Leonardo (Nicolas Cantu), Donatello (Micah Abbey), Michaelangelo (Shamon Brown Jr.) and Raphael (Brady Noon), to fight. Using old, abandoned VHS tapes, Splinter trains his Turtles to be able to defend themselves against humans. As the Turtles grow up into their mid-teens however, they've only become more and more curious about humans. They wonder if humans arent't as bad as Splinter claims. 

Read my full length review at Geeks.Media

Movie Review Pokemon Detective Pikachu

Detective Pikachu (2019) 

Directed by Rob Letterman 

Written by Dan Herdandez, Rob Letterman, Benji Smart, Derek Connelly 

Starring Ryan Reynolds, Justice Smith, Kathryn Newton, Suki Waterhouse,Bill Nighy 

Release Date May 10th, 2019 

Published May 8th, 2019 

Pokemon Detective Pikachu is some hardcore fan service. In fact, if you are not immersed in the universe of Pokemon, you aren’t likely to find much to enjoy beyond the occasional Ryan Reynolds quip. Reynolds himself is a kind of Pokemon fan service as giving this franchise the voice of one of the world’s most popular and charismatic actors is akin to one of the cool kids passing up the cool kid table in the cafeteria so he can sit with the A.V Club and they can absorb some of his aura. 

Pokemon Detective Pikachu opens in pure, visual chaos. A car is escaping from a mysterious lab facility while being chased by a powerful Pokemon called a Mewtoo. The Mewtoo appears to blow up the car, knocking the vehicle over the side of a bridge. The driver appears to have been killed but the swirling vortex of CG chaos makes it impossible to know what happens and since this is our introduction to the story, we are at a loss to care much for what is happening. 

The film slam cuts from the car crash to a field in a small, vaguely Asian town. Tim Goodman (Justice Smith) is one of the few people in his small town who doesn’t have his own Pokemon, a tiny, animal-like creature, who people capture using a special ball that opens up to capture the Pokemon, but only if the Pokemon likes and trusts its new owner or master or trainer? I’m not familiar with the terms and the movie is less than forthcoming for newcomers. 

Tim’s lack of interest in Pokemon is a reaction to his father’s dedication to Pokemon, as a law enforcement officer with his own Pokemon partner named Pikachu. Work took his father away and Tim resents Pokemon for his dad not being around when his mom died. Tim is soon thrust back into his father’s world however when he receives a message that his father was in a deadly car accident. 

Tim must travel to his father’s home in Rhyme City, the rare place where Pokemon and humans live in harmony together. Everyone has their own Pokemon and peace reigns as the two species live in harmony under the watchful leadership of Howard Clifford (Bill Nighy). Howard created Rhyme City as a utopia for Pokemon and humans alike. Naturally, however, there are snakes in Eden and Pikachu is on the lookout. 

Pikachu was believed to have died in the crash that killed Tim’s father so when the two come face to face in Tim’s father’s apartment, they nearly kill each other. In what we are told is a completely unfathomable anomaly, Tim has the ability to hear Pikachu speaking English. No one else on the planet has the ability to communicate with a Pokemon directly and this will not be used in any useful way beyond quips, lots of quips, mildly amusing, inoffensive, only occasionally funny, quips. 

Together, Tim and Pikachu will team with ace junior reporter Lucy Stevens (Kathryn Newton) to find the source of some strange Pokemon behavior. This strange behavior harkens back to the days before humans and Pokemon became friends and it is the key to finding out who is behind Harry’s disappearance, the dangerous Mew-Too and the apparent intention to create a rift between Pokemon and humanity. 

Rob Letterman directed Pokemon Detective Pikachu and he has packed it full of stuff that Pokemon fans will adore. There are Easter eggs on top of Easter eggs with appearances by fan favorite Pokemon doing fan favorite Pokemon things. Characters from the longtime Pokemon cartoons make cameos, I am assuming, special attention is paid, ever so briefly, to a character even I recognized from years of cultural osmosis. Fans will be excited and the inclusion could hint at a wider Detective Pikachu-Pokemon cinematic universe. 

Or so I assume, only Pokemon fans will be able to tell me if I am right or wrong about that. The bottom line issue that I have with Pokemon Detective Pikachu is with the remarkable amount of fan service. The movie is very bland and basic in its general storytelling and so the only thing left in terms of making Detective Pikachu special would either come from making it funny, which it really isn’t or in making it so packed with Pokemon stuff as to render story unnecessary for the hardcore devotees. The makers of this movie went with the second option and left non-Pokemon fans scratching our collective heads waiting for Ryan Reynolds to get funny.

The story takes elements of the mystery genre and mushes them up into a highly predictable story arc. The opening scene is meant to provide a mystery that will play out over the course of the movie but the story cheats this opening repeatedly throughout the movie to fit the narrative. This particular narrative feels as if it was altered numerous times, something strongly indicated by 6 credited writers for Pokemon Detective Pikachu. 

If you can’t tell who the bad guy is from the cast list you aren’t really trying. It’s glaringly obvious throughout where the movie is headed, albeit the actual endgame of the story is a tad bizarre, but by then it was hard to care. In fact, a lot of fans might really have liked what the movie plays as an evil scheme, but that’s an odd digression for another, spoiler filled time. Weird ending aside, there isn’t a story beat in Detective Pikachu that will surprise you from the mismatched partners, the convenient bouts of amnesia, to a third act separation that is so perfunctory the screenwriters should step on screen to introduce it while thanking and giving credit to every screenplay guide ever written.

But, as I stated earlier, I am not the audience for this movie. I am not a Pokemon fan. I have nothing against Pokemon, I know plenty of people who find Pokemon delightful. I am just not into it, it doesn’t do anything for me and since the movie isn’t very funny, even Ryan Reynolds is missing that classic Ryan Reynolds wit, there isn’t much for me to invest in. Fans of Pokemon will likely flip for all of the neato Pokemon stuff in Detective Pikachu but if you are not part of the cult of Pokemon, you’re better off sitting this one out.