Review: 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem' finds its human center

The heroes in a half-shell are back on the big screen for — let me check my notes — the seventh time in "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem," which you can go ahead and call "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Into the Spider-Verse."

The hand-drawn illustrated style of this computer-animated addition to the TMNT universe gives it a decidedly edgy look that owes a lot to the friendly neighborhood webslinger's "Spider-Verse" adventures, even if it never achieves the same level of pop-art opulence as that gorgeously rendered series. But for a "Turtles" film, it's a decent hang, and it ensures that even as we all get older, the TMNT crew will stay frozen in time, perpetual teenagers that they are.

Jeff Rowe, director of 2021's animated blast "The Mitchells vs. the Machines," directs from an extremely pop culture-savvy script he co-wrote alongside producers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. There are references to "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," Adele and BTS, covering several generational spectrums, and a soundtrack heavy on '90s hip-hop, which gives it some crossover with the recent "Transformers" film.

It's a smorgasbord of sorts, a little bit for everybody, with a grounded story of alienation and acceptance at its center.

The Turtles — there's brave Leonardo (voiced by Nicolas Cantu), cool guy Michelangelo (Shamon Brown Jr.), impulsive Raphael (Brady Noon) and brainiac Donatello (Micah Abbey) — dwell in New York's sewers, where their master Splinter (Jackie Chan) warns them, in no uncertain terms, to stay away from people. "Humans are the demon scum of the Earth," they're told, and from what we see of how Splinter was treated above ground, it's clear why he feels that way.

The Turtles aren't so sure, and they long for a normal teenage experience, and are forced to sneak out on the city streets at night to live out their normal fantasies of watching movies, eating pizza and maybe catching a Knicks game.

But these teenage dudes — no one says "cowabunga!" this time around, probably for the better — are also crime fighters, lest we forget, and they're up against a giant mutant housefly named Superfly (voiced with an audible snarl by Ice Cube), who aims to turn his army of mutant cohorts against humans and take over the world.

The Ninja Turtles are aided in their quest to stop Superfly by April O'Neil (Ayo Edebiri), a high school reporter, who helps get the word out about their heroics. And the fight they face is just as much about understanding as it is about physicality, as the turtles curry the favor of the mutant gang (including characters voiced by Rogen, Rose Byrne, John Cena, Paul Rudd and Post Malone) and attempt to turn them against their leader.

The animation is the standout here, comprised of scrappy looking comic images where the brushstrokes and pencil marks are visible. It's anti-polished, anti-perfect, and it gives the film a cool, modern-looking aesthetic. (The gurgling score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross is a benefit as well.)

The Rogen-Goldberg sensibility is also a boon, and the pair lends the film a sensitive emo core, with an underlying plea for tolerance baked into its DNA. It's not heady or weighty, but there's a little more substance here than in your average "Turtles" film. The secret of this ooze is its human center.

agraham@detroitnews.com

'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem'

GRADE: B

Rated PG: for sequences of violence and action, language and impolite material

Running time: 99 minutes

In theaters