It’s not like reptiles, pizza and deadly weaponry weren’t cool before the mid-1980s, but the correct combination of all those elements has stuck with American society for decades.

And even if you grew up with a very defined version of the classic characters at its helm in your childhood, “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” will still speak to your inner nerd.

Beneath the streets of New York City, a quartet of teen brothers has been dying to join their peers and experience all life has to offer after spending their whole lives living in the sewers.

The catch? They’re turtles who have evolved into humanoid form through exposure to a radioactive material known as ooze that they still don’t understand.

However, their rat father figure has forbidden them from exposing their existence to the world for fear of being tortured by scientists.

You know, just like every adolescent…

Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael and Michelangelo have learned to cope with their hindered lifestyle by practicing martial arts and stealthily sneaking into the Big Apple whenever they can, but the lack of connection is only causing them more strife.

When they accidentally save a girl their age named April O’Neil from street crime, the turtles soon learn they might not be the only mutated animals roaming Manhattan.

But, these creatures also may not be as friendly as they’d hope.

This may be the youngest we’ve ever seen or heard the TMNT characters; in pretty much every iteration, Leo, Donny, Raph and Mikey have simply sounded like young men. And more often than not, they’re barely indistinguishable apart from their color-coded masks.

With the heroes in a half-shell going through puberty, their much more childlike voices match their burgeoning personalities — instead of being a steady leader, Leonardo (Nicolas Cantu) is more of the family tattletale; Donatello (Micah Abbey) a high-pitched tech dork; Michelangelo (Shamon Brown) the lonely baby of the group on his way to being a party dude; and Raphael (Brady Noon) an unbridled mess of anger issues who hasn’t grown into his body.

Though there’s no stunt-casting for the title teens, the same is hardly true for the rest of the ensemble, namely Jackie Chan as their paranoid parent Splinter, whose exposition of how they all came to be makes as much sense as any other version of their backstory.

Ayo Edebiri offers fine tones as April, a wannabe high school journalist who will do anything to break a big story apart from being on camera after an incident that’s somehow grosser than a family that lives in the sewer.

Then there’s rapper Ice Cube as the aptly named Superfly — the terror of the New York underbelly — leading a cadre of celebrity-voiced mutants, some of whom look and sound a lot different than the action figures you had when you were 7.

But is that a bad thing? Nah, bro!

Besides voicing everyone’s favorite mohawked warthog, Seth Rogen joins writing partner Evan Goldberg along with a team of five for the screenplay, which feels like it was written by guys who grew up with the ’80s comics, cartoons and plethora of toys.

You know, because it was.

At the helm of it all is direction by co-writer Jeff Rowe, part of the creative team that brought you the delightfully chaotic and unpredictable “The Mitchells vs. the Machines.”

The animation has that same intentional lack of polish, which is a refreshing change for a franchise that quickly went from Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman’s original irreverent pulp antiheroes to a more sanitized Saturday morning empire and has taken plenty of turns along the way.

And let’s be honest; even if you remember the ’90s movies fondly, calling them good was as much of a stretch as the gooey mozzarella on our boys’ favorite dish.

Rogen and company bring out the relatable traits of the characters, namely their outsider status, which, while always part of the story, tends to be overlooked in some versions. Even when they’re reworking certain parts of the origin story — Splinter’s in particular — that level of care is present, as well as capturing the early teen experience of glasses, braces and seeing most of the world strictly through your cell phone.

The high energy and meta humor of this latest take on the Turtle universe recapture the best qualities of the series without feeling like a studio product, especially surprising from Nickelodeon Movies given its embrace of keeping hot properties like “SpongeBob Squarepants” and “PAW Patrol” rolling on the big screen whatever it takes.

“Mutant Mayhem” is easily the funniest take on “TMNT” in the four decades it’s been around. Namely because it tends to just embrace how silly the whole premise is without trying to justify it to those who don’t have that cowabunga spirit.

Feels appropriate for something that started as a joke drawing of a bipedal turtle with nunchuks, am I right?