At The Movies: The Turtles are back in a fresh, funny new format

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (PG)

99 minutes, opens on Thursday

4 stars

The story: Four ordinary turtles lost in a New York sewer come into contact with a mysterious ooze that gives them human characteristics. Splinter (voiced by Jackie Chan), a kind-hearted rat, takes them in and raises them as his sons, naming them Donatello (Micah Abbey), Michelangelo (Shamon Brown Jr), Leonardo (Nicolas Cantu) and Raphael (Brady Noon). Splinter hides his family from the world above because people view them as vermin. However, a new friend, the aspiring journalist April O’Neil (Ayo Edebiri) proves to them that not all humans are dangerous.

The last two Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies (2014 and 2016) were big-budget action spectaculars that turned the main characters into knock-off Marvel superheroes. The films made some money, but not enough, so a planned third live-action instalment was cancelled.

That was the correct decision, and an even better one was assembling a team of comedy writers that includes Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg to make this animated reboot.

The duo bring back the family-oriented sweetness and coming-of-age awkwardness that have been character hallmarks since the heroes surfaced in the 1980s in comic books. Rogen and Goldberg, who co-wrote and produced youth-centred comedies Superbad (2007) and Good Boys (2019), show that they can create easy-going naturalistic comedy without F-bombs and drug humour.

Most of all, the writers remember that the Turtles are a hit because they are disgusting in a way that kids find fascinating. They live in a dank sewer and are trained by the mangy-looking rat sensei Splinter.

Their enemies are even more gross, and therefore, even more cool, and the artwork’s brush stroke patterns highlight their grotesque forms. In this movie, the pizza-loving brothers battle the lumbering Superfly, an ooze-creature that was once a tiny excrement-eating insect. In an inspired casting move, the compound-eyed creature is voiced by Ice Cube. The actor-rapper is so radiantly likeable here that his pro-mutant, anti-human arguments make sense.

Director Jeff Rowe makes his solo feature debut with this picture, having co-helmed the award-winning The Mitchells Vs The Machines (2021). Under his guidance, the child actors voicing the Turtle brothers sound like real boys, not hyperactive kids on helium as tends to be the case in other works of animation. Catchphrases (cowabunga!) are kept to a minimum.

Comedienne-actress Edebiri shines as the earnest April, the first human to sense the humanity in the brothers, with this role proving that this year, the woman seen in Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse (2023) and the hit series The Bear (2022 to present) can do no wrong.

Hot take: In this animated Turtles origin story, gorgeous artwork, sensitively drawn characters and solid jokes have replaced the massive but generic action set pieces seen in previous films – and not a moment too soon.