If you know me, you know that I’ve had a soft spot for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles just about forever.

Around the same time that the first animated series hit TV screens in the late 80s – in a neutered form in the UK, with the title even changed to Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles – I was also introduced to the far darker TMNT TTRPG, which largely expanded on the satirical, violent indie comic the Turtles originated from.

It was the latter that really hooked me, though I still enjoyed the much more kid friendly shenanigans of the cartoon.

After a promising start to the live action adventures of the Turtles with the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie in 1990, not only did their big screen adaptations never quite reach the same heights again, but quite often they were downright awful.

I do believe that the 2007 CGI-animated movie is incredibly underrated; though not perfect, it really does get the Turtles as characters and has some fantastic interplay between them (especially a superb Leo vs Raph fight scene).

Yet we’ve been waiting for decades for a movie to truly do them justice – and it pleases me to say that the movie we’ve been waiting for is here.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is a hyperactive, kaleidoscopic exercise in both style and substance.

Though I wouldn’t accuse it of copying the Spider-Verse movies, I think it’s fair to say that the densely layered, multi-style aesthetic of those Spider-Man movies – which have a storyline purpose for the clash and mashup of styles, with multiverses leaking into each other and characters travelling between realities – has definitely given Mutant Mayhem the courage to be more than just a CGI cartoon.

The animation style of Mutant Mayhem is undeniably gorgeous, at times looking like stop motion with colourful, comic book style scribbles – just like the Spider-Verse films, it’s also one that you could conceivably freeze frame at any single moment and have yourself a beautiful work of poster art.

So it’s definitely got it where it counts from a visual standpoint, but what about its story?

In Mutant Mayhem, the reclusive, rogue scientist Baxter Stockman has created a family of mutated animals – but he’s hunted down and seemingly killed when his secret lab is raided by TCRI, the Techno Cosmic Research Institute.

The destruction causes Stockman’s transformative mutagen to leak into the sewers of New York – creating the four mutated turtles of the title.

Fifteen years later, the now teenage turtles are being cared for in the sewers by their ‘father’, a mutated rat named Splinter, whose negative encounters with humanity have caused him to be hugely overprotective of his sons, teaching them martial arts in order for them to be equipped to defend themselves in the human world.

They yearn to be normal teenagers, however – and an encounter with other anthropomorphic, mutated animals gives them a chance to prove themselves as heroes.

It’s great to see a TMNT film that messes with their origin in a positive way, without resorting to bone headed contrivances – which is something we have seen happen before.

It’s also great that this may be the first time that the Turtles genuinely feel like teenage kids; bickering, talking over each other, getting overexcited and even being a bit rebellious in the face of parental direction.

The central characters play off of each other beautifully and feel distinct, as is generally the case in most adaptations of the source material. The supporting cast and the other mutants are all superb too, with Ice Cube’s big bad Superfly and Jackie Chan’s hilarious Splinter being particular standouts.

Though Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross provide a score that goes above and beyond the quality of soundtrack you’d expect in a TMNT film – it really is a stunning piece of work – the songs included are likely to linger in your mind far longer.

That’s because, for the most part, the montages and a few other scenes feature classic late 80s/early 90s hip hop, with banger after banger being delivered. It’s an intoxicating cocktail of stunning visuals and phenomenal music that works incredibly well.

The fight scenes are also stunningly well choreographed and the script (co-written by Seth Rogan) is genuinely funny too, with a running joke about milking that pays off hilariously.

I absolutely adored Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem – hopefully, it’s done well enough at the box office that the mid-credits sting gets to fulfil its promise of a very important character popping up in a sequel.