5 Reasons I Like the New Ninja Turtles Movie
While having tacos the other day with my friend and former CEO Les, he gave me some advice that I found to be an ideal blend of supportive and challenging. I had been recounting my first few post-employment months, including my recent AMC A-List movies of the week, and he said, “You should enjoy this time. In a year, if I’m still coming down here for lunch and you’re telling me about the movies you saw … Well, I’ll still come down here for that, but I might tell you to try doing something else too, you have too much talent.”
Later that afternoon, as Nicole Kidman welcomed me to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, that advice was still on my mind, and within the first five minutes of the film I was overwhelmed with inspiration. “You know, Les is right,” I thought to myself. “I should be using whatever talent I have to tell even more people about this movie!”
So, welcome to installment one of my new Kind & Funny blog, where I plan to practice gratitude, creativity, and critical thinking by writing about things I like and why I like them. Thank you Les for always being a good friend and mentor. Here are 5 things I like about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem:
1. The teenage turtles
You’d miss all the childhood pictures further down, but I could stop writing now and you could just read this Ringer article titled “‘Mutant Mayhem’ Makes Middle-Aged Turtles Feel Young,” which contains this spot-on analysis: “Through its perfectly imperfect animation style and a reimagining of the franchise’s world and characters, Mutant Mayhem is an exciting entry in a long-running series that makes it feel fresher than ever.” This reimagining of each turtle’s unique personality made me realize that “Which Ninja Turtle is Your Favorite?” (Raphael) was the first important pop-culture personality test of my life, way before Hogwarts houses (Gryffindor, unfortunately) or Sex and the City characters (I always thought Steve, but Kelly says his character arc gets weird, so Aidan or Charlotte?). I’ll always be partial to Raph, but the jobs done by legit teenagers Micah Abbey, Shamon Brown Jr., Nicolas Cantu, and Brady Noon make every turtle newly compelling, and it pushes the story (and future sequels🤞) in a compelling direction.
2. Ayo Edebiri as April O’Neil
Everything Ayo has touched in 2023, for me, is gold. I f*ing love it when she shows up in anything. She crushes it as April O’Neil (now an aspiring journalist the same age as the turtles because duh that’s such a better idea), bringing her characteristic blend of hilarity and sarcasm and warmth that hits all the right notes. Also, holy crap does Ayo pick great projects and make them better: The Bear Season 2. Bottoms. Theater Camp. I Think You Should Leave Season 3 “Supermarket Swap.” She wrote on What We Do in the Shadows. Her film debut was an uncredited role in Shithouse. Turns out, Ayo is from Boston (Dorchester) and went to the same high school as my dad, Boston Latin. Emily Blunt and LaKeith Stanfield and The Rock watch out, Ayo is coming for the favorite actor crown.
3. The visual artistry
As you can see, the Ninja Turtles have long inspired my choices in bedding, fashion, art, and food:
The visual style of this movie is like Into the Spiderverse + Puss in Boots: The Last Wish + Disco Elysium (experimental video game), and I was consistently thrilled by it.
4. The soundtrack
A quick digression: Who lets high school basketball teams choose whatever they want for intro music? At 14, Kelly’s high school girls’ team took the court to Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me,” and apparently nobody questioned that decision. My school in the suburbs of Boston went with M.O.P.’s “Ante Up,” which was far too confident a choice given our collective talent. Anyway, M.O.P. works far better in this movie. I loved every song choice, from Natasha Bedingfield to Blackstreet. I loved every nostalgic nod, and I thought they nailed all the expected and unexpected choices—after hearing M.O.P. I felt that they would probably use a Wu-Tang song somewhere, and it was a delight to see how they delivered on that prediction. (I won’t spoil it because I’m sure you’re going to see the movie now—it is currently streaming on Paramount+—but if you don’t want to watch the movie and you want me to spoil it you can always take me out for tacos.)
5. Everything
The cast list is stacked, and I just can’t tell you how much freaking fun it was to see a cartoon that I loved when I was little be updated with such creativity and care. Mutant Mayhem made a middle-aged me feel young again, and got me thinking about how one’s creative talent can be used ambitiously while having a whole lot of fun at the same time. As I’ve heard Kelly tell it, that’s a big part of her Kind & Funny lifestyle. With my experience in music journalism and copyediting it’s easy for me to fall into the perspective that I’m correcting mistakes, but I prefer to see it as trying to make good things great, and to do that you really have to be able to see and celebrate the good things. And since practicing gratitude has scientifically proven benefits, I intend to use this space to point out the positives of things I encounter in my life, even (especially?) if that thing is a movie about cartoon reptiles. I think that right now, that feels like the right use of my talent.
