Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (2023) review

Seventh "feature film" involving everyone's favorite sewer-dwelling, pizza-scarfing, crime fighting reptiles (that were named after Italian Renaissance painters) - here, their rat-dad Splinter (voiced by Jackie Chan) tries to keep them away from human beings but their open desire is to live like normal teenagers so, with assistance from budding reporter April O'Neil (Ayo Edebiri), they set out to stop rogue insect Superfly (Ice Cube) from building a device that mutates all of humanity and become "accepted by society."  I was a fan of the cartoon (and video games) when I was a kid, and now they're pushing it onto Gen Z, trying to make it "modern" and use some of their lingo ("rizz," "opps" etc.), but I personally don't care for the scratchy, crude animation style and it never gave the impression they did anything more than stitch together three episodes of the TV show and call it a movie.  The one thing I think the production team (which includes producers and co-writers Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg) did right is how they handled the voice-acting by having their cast do their lines as a group to improve the banter and encourage improvisation.  Otherwise, I'll retain my fond memories of begging for quarters at the arcade to play Konami's Turtles in Time....