The sarcastic joke that spawned a franchise, the pizza-loving posse are back in this animated outing from The Mitchells vs. the Machines director Jeff Rowe. Presumably Jon Turteltaub was busy.

Mercifully closer to Monsters Inc. than the live-action Michael Bay versions, Mutant Mayhem sees Donatello (Micah Abbey), Michelangelo (Shamon Brown Jr.), Leonardo (Nicolas Cantu) and Raphael (Brady Noon) defy their father/sensei Splinter (Jackie Chan), who warns them not to leave the sewers for fear of being attacked and/or milked by humans. But student journalist April O’Neil (The Bear‘s Ayo Edebiri) agrees to help the turtles win public acceptance, if they help her stop the criminal Superfly (Ice Cube), a mutant insect intent on enslaving humanity.

The plot never crawls out of the X-Men‘s shadow, re-shelling the central question of whether those who would shun us deserve our sympathy or contempt. But the film is carried by snappy comedy and absorbing animation, a hybrid of grimy Batman noir and funky Spider-Verse neon, with the clever twist of having the humans look weirder than the mutants. The effect makes you forget the heroes are turtles and focus on the real reason they don’t fit in: they’re teenagers. And also turtles.

The hip-hop aesthetic and talented voice cast make the characters pop like never before, particularly Edebiri as the brilliantly sarcastic April, a more engaging female character than any live-action Marvel or DC films have to offer. Paul Rudd, Hannibal Buress and Natasia Demetriou also get a pizza the action, while the turtles benefit from being voiced by teenagers for the first time in their 40-year adolescence. Maybe one day they’ll be played by real turtles.

Until then, this is solid summer fare that balances its mocking turtle snark with a soft emotional underbelly, all to a classic hip-hop soundtrack that includes De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest and KMD. And with more TMNT movies and series coming down the pipes, Paramount is milking the property for all it’s worth. Don’t call it a comeback. Call it a renaissance.