I Gave In

 

I have been skeptical to watch this movie for reasons I will explain at the end of this post. Recently, I gave in and watched it on Paramount +. Of course this centers on for teenage mutant turtle siblings who were recluse under the sewer of 15 years by their mutant rat father Splinter due to his unpleasant experience with humans. To help both himself and the turtles defend themselves, Splinter teaches them and himself ninjutsu. Upon meeting April O'Neil, the siblings team-up with her to investigate and prevent a series of robberies and find themselves facing a group of gangster mutants led by the notorious Superfly.

This movie was kind of awesome. The animation is amazing, obviously taking inspiration from Spider-Verse 😍, but also adding some small realistic details. The writing was also surprisingly well done. I like that they dialed down some background on the characters. Like Splinter for example; he's not the master we've come to know and love, he's you're typical middle-aged overprotective dad who learned martial arts off the internet just in case of emergency. It's so simple and hilarious. The characters are relatable, likeable, and memorable. Particularly the turtles, as they just want to be accepted, like literally every teenager on the planet. This isn't really special, but they did a very good job at showing both a positive and negative way of mutants responding to humans, with Splinter and the turtles being positive, and Superfly being negative. That was well done.

The voice acting was great, with my favorite being the turtles. I mentioned that the turtles are the most relatable with another reason being they were voiced by actual kids (Micah Abbey, Shamon Brown Jr, Nicolas Cantu, and Brady Noon). I'm not saying that only kids can properly portray child characters. I've seen multiple performances, physically and voice recorded (including in this movie), of adults portraying child characters that are FANTASTIC! But it definitely helped add nuance to the characters.  I also enjoyed Ayo Edebiri (April), Jackie Chan (Splinter), and Ice Cube (Superfly), who had quite the foul mouth. 

I will also quickly callout the music of the movie. Not only was the score pretty good, but the songs featured in this movie are an absolute BOP! 

As for dislikes, I found it's last minute community message during the final battle kind of corny. There's nothing wrong with community, in fact community is a beautiful thing. But it's not the only thing, nor is it the key to saving the world (someone should've told that to the writers of Exorcist: Believer). Life doesn't work that way. 

The reason I was skeptical to watch this is because I do see it as competition for Across The Spider-Verse. Do I like it better than Spider-Verse? HELL NO! But I will keep an eye on this during the award season. Thanks For Reading.