Ninja Turtles are back, maybe better than ever

There are some good gags and clever innovations in the animated "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem," but there is one brilliant idea: Casting Ice Cube as the voice of the movie's mutant insect supervillain Super Fly.

It might have once been hard to foresee the value of having the emcee who rapped of "dropping bombs on your moms" as the MVP of a PG-rated kids movie. But we're now up to the seventh "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" film, not counting all the series and videogames. That's a lot of movies for a bit of IP that's clung more firmly to lunch boxes than it has to pop culture. For the turtles, it was getting to be time to either, as Ice Cube would say, "chickity-check yo' self" or try something new.

"Mutant Mayhem," which opened in theaters yesterday, can't entirely get over the feeling of trodding over well-covered turtle ground. But if we must go once more into the ooze, the film by director Jeff Rowe (co-director of 'The Mitchells vs. the Machines') and co-written by co-producers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, is probably the best of a not-so-stellar franchise. It's certainly the one most invested with that "teenage" part of the turtles' name. Plus, it's got Ice Cube as a fly who quotes from the O'Jays.

The animation is vividly textured, the beat is persistently hip-hop (Lauryn Hill, De La Soul, Ol' Dirty Bastard and others pack the electronic score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross) and the New York of the film is impressively detailed. But the most important twist to this "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" iteration may be diving into the teenage-ness of its 15-year-old turtles.

If "Barbie" was balanced between Greta Gerwig's childhood memories and her adult feminism, "Mutant Mayhem" gives itself over more fully to the...