Boys, where have you been?

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem — 3.5/5

It's fun!! It played fast and loose with the turtles and how we know them, and so created something both familiar and new. It screams along, moving too fast to let you question the relatively small shifts in reality. Splinter's more a dad than a teacher. They're actual teenagers. Mutants everywhere! There's a casual cool, an immediate chemistry present within its parts. It rolls on vibes and a Tony Hawk Pro Skater soundtrack. The core of the turtles is in that fucking theme song, and everything else is water. And now, to approach this children's movie through a critical lens: I couldn't help but to feel a tinge of disappointment throughout? And that disappointment isn't that it's bad, it's that it had all the ingredients to be better. Its emotional climaxes don't feel as emotionally climactic. It's got a clear 'about me' but also just... handles it with a hand-wave? Its casual cool borders on lazy. As it is, it's a perfect movie to watch in the background and get sucked in for bits and pieces at a time. And ultimately, that 'good enough' may very well be what makes it great. Infinitely rewatchable because it's got just enough to make you sit, but not enough to make you sit and think. We'll see? And, another note—Doritos, BTS, Attack on Titan. Those jokes on one hand made the movie accessible and easily relatable and, on the other, made it seem like a giant commercial. Which I know it is; the Ninja Turtle cinematic universe continues at Wal-Mart, in comics and cartoons and action figures and bedsheets. But the way it's handled, it feels harbinger to a new thing: advertising and movies collapsing into one. It's all just one cinematic universe called content.