YMMV / Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem

• Award Snub: For much of the Awards race, the movie thanks to both the critical and commercial praise was considered a Dark Horse favorite to get recognized for an Animated Feature nomination, but ultimately missed out on a slot in the end.
• Awesome Art: From the trailer alone, the film utilizes a hand-drawn art direction that feels like concept drawings or oil paintings come to life with its sketchy and painted textures, which work wonders alongside the stop motion-esque animation. The grunginess of the color palette juxtaposed with vibrant lighting also helps capture the feel of the setting (New York City) astonishingly well.
• All Animation Is Disney: The film is usually mistaken for a Paramount Animation production, as it's possible to find the film on their website. But they actually weren't involved in the film.
• Awesome Music: "Unwritten" by Natasha Bedingfield memorably shows up in the scene where April uncontrollably vomits while trying to do the morning announcements—and its not the last time the song popped up in a 2023 movie either. While the song's use later in the year in Anyone but You went on to overshadow it, both its presence and impression here are still not to be understated though.
• Broken Base: Donatello's Childlike Voice. Some people think it sounds absolutely adorable and the voice suits him. Others think he sounds about a decade or so younger than his character's age and hence doesn't even sound like an actual teenager, despite being voiced by one.
• Character Rerailment: After Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles made him more playful, reckless, and rebellious, Leonardo is back to being more cautious and sensible in this film. That being said, he has his moments of being as immature as his brothers in lighter moments.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • April getting stage fright and embarrassing herself by vomiting on camera? Not funny. Us being treated to a glorious Vomit Indiscretion Shot where she vomits an absolute torrent of refuse everywhere to an ill-fitting pop song? Hilarious!
  • The milking joke was initially funny and just the slightest bit gross, but repetition made it pretty old and obvious by the time the turtles were actually captured and milked. Then Splinter shows up and calls out the scenario, noting that the machine is literally called "Mega Milker 2000," and the joke becomes laugh-out-loud brilliant.
  • Splinter admitting that he only had one friend (a roach named Kevin) is sad. Kevin getting crushed by a random man is also a bit sad. Splinter eating Kevin, while making sure that nobody saw him doing it, while casually admitting to his sons that he ate Kevin? Now it is funny.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: All of the mutants in the Superfly gang are popular, but Mondo Gecko, Rocksteady, Bebop, and Genghis Frog have bigger fanbases than some of the turtles despite their limited screentime and focus.
• Epileptic Trees: Some of the viewers noticed in the trailers that Raph has what looks like the number "6" scribbled on his neck-shoulder area, leading to suspicions that the turtles are only some of a certain amount of test subjects. While Superfly and his gang are labelled with numbers in Baxter Stockman's notes, it's never shown that the turtles were part of his plans.
• Evil Is Cool:
  • Superfly is an exceptionally memorable villain due to his charisma and Ice Cube's Large Ham performance. Becoming a One-Winged Angel by the climax certainly helps.
  • Cynthia Utrom also stands out for her menacing nature and Maya Rudolph's Cold Ham performance.
• Fanon: Due to Donnie’s voice actor sounding young even compared to the rest of the turtles’ teenage voice actors, fans have taken to headcanon that he is the youngest brother in this iteration, as opposed to his usual role of being in the middle. However, the character bios describe Mikey as the youngest, as usual. To rectify this some instead headcanon that Donnie is a late bloomer whose voice hasn't changed like his brothers' yet.
• Fridge Brilliance: On top of learning martial arts from TV and movies, Splinter probably picked up English from there as well, as he has a Chinese accent, similar to his actor. On top of that, the turtles being surprised that Splinter can understand Scumbug mirrors the fact that Jackie Chan knows other languages besides his native Cantonese and English, albeit not fluently.
• Genius Bonus: The kaiju-sized Superfly being compared to Godzilla is somewhat funny to those who know the history of the character. Godzilla's Japanese name, Gojira, is a portmanteau of "gorira" (gorilla) and "kujira" (whale). Superfly has the latter half of that combination down.
• He Panned It, Now He Sucks!: Youtuber Eric Carter named this the worst film of 2023 of the year in his "Top 10 Worst Movies of 2023" video, citing the heavy improv, gross-out, and pop culture styled humor (he also regularly gives the Marvel Cinematic Universe, especially the post-2019 entries, grief for focusing too much on the comedy and not enough on the drama), the large number of licensed hip-hop and rap songs (he apparently doesn't really like licensed music in films), and interpretations of the main characters (labeling the titular characters as teenaged self-inserts for Seth Rogen and his friends instead of the more serious crimefighters they're usually shown as and Splinter as a generic laid-back dad who's probably a stoner instead of the firm but fair Reasonable Authority Figure he is usually depicted as) as negatives despite praising the more serious climax and the animation (favorably comparing it to Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse), while also saying that he believed the film was made for everyone other than him, how he felt claustrophobic and uncomfortable watching it in theaters to the point he couldn't give it its own video review when it came out, and calling it the most torturous experience he had in 2023. Needless to say, several people in the comment section begin giving him grief for calling it the worst of the year just because he couldn't project himself onto it like he could with other incarnations of the franchise (namely Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003), which he states in the video is his favorite version of the turtles).
• He Really Can Act:
  • Ice Cube, an actor/musician not known for playing larger-than-life villains, won a lot of acclaim for his role as Superfly and is widely seen as one of the film's highlights.
  • Similarly, audiences familiar with Nicolas Cantu's previous roles were quite impressed by the level of maturity and overall emotion he conveyed in his performance as Leonardo.
• Magnificent Bastard: Superfly is the master criminal terrorizing New York, with plans on global domination for his kind. Once an ordinary house fly who was mutated by Baxter Stockman, Superfly witnessed his creator die in front of him, and after raising his fellow mutants as a family, Superfly was subject to extreme prejudice by humankind. Determined to gain acceptance for all mutants, Superfly begins a highly successful crime wave to steal technology across New York, eliminating anyone who sees his face and keeping his true identity a secret. Superfly plans to use his scientific mind to build a device that will transform all animal life on Earth into mutants, becoming the dominant species over humanity. When the Turtles and his family turn on him, Superfly fights them all to a standstill, and even when his machine is broken, Superfly utilizes the mutagen inside to become a gigantic monster that nearly destroys New York with his own two hands.
• Moe: Donatello, on top of his big set of square Nerd Glasses and usual geeky personality, has the youngest voice actor of the Ninja Turtles, and sounds absolutely adorable.
• Older Than They Think: While the movie received a lot of attention for having actual teenagers voice the turtles, the original 1990 live-action film also had an actual teenager voicing one of the turtles: Corey Feldman was in his late teens when he voiced Donatello.^note So was Ernie Reyes Jr. who was Donatello's stunt double, for that matter.
• Presumed Flop: Many people believed the movie underperformed at the box office because of the low numbers it made comparing to other animated releases like The Super Mario Bros. Movie and Elemental. Although it didn't make as much money as those films, it doubled its 70 million budget with 180.5 million worldwide, with a sequel and an animated series announced in development.
• Signature Scene: The montage scene of the brothers officially beginning their crime fighting career has gotten quite a bit of praise, even in relation to other intense and well-animated fight scenes.
• Squick:
  • Splinter and Scumbug becoming a couple and sharing a tongue-filled kiss. Even the turtles find it gross.
  • The weird focus Cynthia Utrom has on “milking” the mutants of their DNA. She could have chosen any other word…
  • April puking while trying to make a school announcement. The worst part is that the puke is overly detailed.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Some fans didn't like how this version completely removes Hamato Yoshi from the backstory of the main characters, turning Splinter into a completely normal rat living in New York before his mutation. This means that rather than personally training his sons in ninjutsu, he trains alongside them by watching chop sockey movies and instructional videos, which is a rather dubious and ineffective way of mastering martial arts. This also somewhat weakens The Stinger revealing the Shredder, as he no longer has a personal history or rivalry with Splinter or the Turtles. Notably, the Michael Bay-produced 2014 movie did the same with a book on ninjutsu, and the idea was similarly negatively received.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: There are several characters that deserved more prominence and development here.
  • Baxter Stockman looks to be a promising antagonist with an interesting motive, and fans agreed that Giancarlo Esposito, who is no stranger to intimidating corporate executives, is a good casting choice for the character. Fans were growing tired of either the Shredder or a Canon Foreigner being the villain in a Ninja Turtles movie, and were hoping Stockman being the Big Bad would be a nice change of pace. Unfortunately, he dies before the opening title sequence, while Superfly, a Canon Foreigner, is the villain. But given Baxter's tendency to cheat death, there's still a chance that the same could apply here.
  • The same thing happens to Superfly's gang, particularly members who are notable recurring characters in other versions of the Turtles like Leatherhead, Ray Fillet, and Genghis Frog. Because there's so many mutants, several inevitably end up sidelined in presence compared to others, not helped by how the gang first shows up in the middle of the movie.
• Ugly Cute: Despite the Turtles looking rather, let's say odd, as babies post-mutation, they're still pretty adorable.
• Unexpected Character: Among the mutants featured here, Leatherhead, Mondo Gecko, Genghis Frog, Ray Fillet, and Wingnut all make an appearance, which is surprising given that they (and Ray Fillet's counterparts, in his case) traditionally don't show up during the Turtles' earliest adventures.

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