"Leo" and "Mutant Mayhem"

Let's talk about some movies starring animated reptiles today.

Netflix's animated film "Leo" was a hard sell for me.  Adam Sandler's has a mixed record when it comes to films he'd written himself, and I hadn't enjoyed any of the animated ones.  Also, the title character that Sandler plays is an elderly lizard who sounds like all the other off-putting elderly characters that Sandler has played over the years.  Fortunately, Leo is considerably more interesting than most Sandler comedy leads.

Leo and his turtle pal Squirtle (Bill Burr) live in the terrarium of the fifth grade classroom of Mrs. Salinas (Allison Strong) as class pets.  When Leo learns that he's reaching the end of his natural life span, he starts secretly talking to the kids in the class to give advice on their problems. He helps talkative Summer (Sunny Sandler) be more considerate and make friends.  He helps rich snob Jayda (Sadie Sandler) become more grounded.  He helps held-back class bully Anthony (Ethan Smigel) and Eli (Roey Smigel), the kid with helicopter parents who have a literal drone following him around.  He even helps the miserable substitute teacher, Mrs. Malkin (Cecily Strong), who takes over while Mrs. Salinas is on maternity leave.

As you can probably tell from how many of the kids are voiced by children of Adam Sandler and co-writer Robert Smigel, "Leo" is a vanity project.  However, it's well-written, keenly observed, unusually timely, and completely kid-appropriate.  There are a lot of fun little running jokes and subversions that I appreciated, like the kindergarteners acting like swarms of piranhas, and none of the major characters really being a villain, though several of them do villainous things.  The animation is just good enough that it doesn't draw much attention to itself, and thankfully avoids a lot of the gross-out tropes I associate with some of Sandler's past efforts.  If you're a "Hotel Transylvania" fan, many of the same creatives are involved.  I went in with low expectations, and was happily surprised.

The new "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" movie, however, was one of the better films I saw from last summer.  I'm very familiar with the '90s Turtle cartoons and movies, and frankly this was never my franchise.  However, the new "Mutant Mayhem" movie from director Jeff Rowe, and written by a team that includes Rowe, Seth Rogen, and Evan Goldberg, is one I can count myself a fan of.  It's a total reboot, starring the four mutant turtle brothers, Donatello (Micah Abbey), Leonardo (Nicolas Cantu), Raphael (Brady Noon), and Michaelangelo (Shamon Brown Jr.), who now sound and act like actual, real-world teenagers.  They spout pop culture references, constantly talk over each other, sneak around behind the back of their protective foster father Splinter (Jackie Chan!), and get excited and silly when they discover something cool.  There's this wonderful new energy and verve to the characters that is so appealing and infectious.

In this version of the story, the Turtles want very badly to join the normal, above-ground world, but they're aware that they're scary mutants and have to stay hidden.    They decide the best way to win over the public is to use their ninja skills to become heroes, and soon befriend a high schooler named April (Ayo Edibiri) who helps them out.  There's a larger criminal conspiracy going on involving the evil corporation responsible for their mutations, and a bunch of other mutants voiced by celebrities who are the result of other accidents and experiments.  However, the bulk of the screen time is wisely devoted to the four Turtles and their growing pains. 

   

I love the way this movie looks, taking the "Spider-verse" film as a starting point, and creating a much more rough-hewn visual style that sometimes looks like choppy stop-motion animation, and really goes for the more exaggerated expressions and movements associated with old school traditional character animation.  Everything looks a little uglier, a little weirder, and a little more off-kilter than the depictions of these characters that we've seen before, but there's also so much more personality and emotion there too.  April finally feels like a real person.  The Turtles aren't just collections of tropes, but distinct individuals.  This is one of the best reboots of any franchise I've ever seen, especially since it makes so clear that the current generation of kids is the target audience, and the creators are concerned with appealing to their sensibilities more than anyone else's.  And thank goodness.

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