Cowabunga.

It seems kind of strange that Weird Al Yankovic and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles never hung out back in the day, doesn’t it? They sort of occupy the same cultural space, offering expertly crafted pop-culture parody to the delight of fans in the know while still delivering entertainment that would play to a larger audience that didn’t need to know the source code of the jokes.

I never had much interest in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles; I could appreciate the joke of Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird’s original comics, riffing on the grimdark storylines being crafted for Daredevil and Batman in the Serious Age of the ’80s, but the animated series and movies that spun out of them never did much for me, and that Michael Bay reboot was just plain disturbing. That said, once I saw Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem was being made by Jeff Rowe, who co-directed The Mitchells Vs. the Machines, for Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s Point Grey production company, I was entirely on board.

I just wish I’d managed to see it theatrically, because Mutant Mayhem is a hell of a lot of fun. Rogen and Goldberg understand something about the characters that no previous adaptation ever did: They’re children, who’ve grown up sheltered (and home-schooled) by an overprotective parent. Yes, he taught them awesome combat skills, but only because he wanted them to be as terrified of the outside world as he is. (There’s a running gag about Splinter being convinced humans want to milk mutants – and, god help him, he’s not wrong.)

But kids naturally rebel against their parents’ worldview, and at the age of 15 all Mikey, Leo, Donny and Raph want to do is experience human culture – catch a movie, make friends, maybe even go to high school. The only problem is that revealing themselves would also expose their existence to a sinister corporation bent on using their very essence to re-engineer the mysterious ooze that created them in the first place.

And guess what? It turns out the Turtles aren’t the only mutants in Manhattan; there’s also this mysterious underworld figure called Superfly, and he has a whole posse of mutant pals helping him with a super-secret project to bring their kind out of the shadows. Great idea, right? Everybody wins! Except that the Turtles’ new pal, high-school reporter April O’Neil, has been digging into the whole Superfly thing, and she has some concerns.

That’s enough plot, honestly. The movie promises mayhem, and Rowe and his team have so much fun making good on that promise – the voice cast is a constant delight, casting actual teens Micah Abbey, Shamon Brown Jr., Nicolas Cantu and Brady Noon as the Turtles and and surrounding them with energetic, instantly identifiable stars who are clearly having a great time. Ayo Edebiri, Jackie Chan and Ice Cube are the standouts as April, Splinter and Superfly, respectively, but Rogen’s clearly been waiting his entire life to voice Bebop.

And it looks incredible. It turns out the Spider-Verse movies aren’t the only CG animated features making creative leaps: Mutant Mayhem invents a new look that favors dimensionality and depth over comic-book references, a crowded, calamitous cityscape populated with fleshy, bulbous characters with bright eyes and a tendency towards claymation-like movement. Rowe and production designer Yashar Kassi have given us something entirely new, moving away from the nightmarish photorealism of the Bay movie to embrace the inherent silliness of the concept – and the enthusiasm of their young heroes. These are kids, having adventures, and even when things are scary it’s still clear everybody’s having fun.

Paramount’s 4K presentation looks almost three-dimensional, with detail and color depth that present the movie in the best possible light. The frames I’ve grabbed here can’t capture the energy and creativity that crackle through every scene; you really need to see this thing in motion. The Atmos soundtrack is just as rambunctious, dialogue rebounding around the room as characters chatter amongst themselves, and the soundscape scaling up for larger sequences in midtown Manhattan.

Both the 4K and Blu-ray releases of Mutant Mayhem offer the same suite of special features. “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” lets the filmmakers introduce us to the performers who voice the Turtles, discussing both the importance of casting actual teenagers in the roles (for the first time!) and the value of having them bounce off one another in-studio to improvise dialogue that older writers couldn’t approximate.

“The Mutant Uprising” showcases the rest of the voice cast, with clips of just about everyone in the recording studio – Rogen and Goldberg fanboying over Jackie Chan, to the point of reworking Splinter’s big fight scene to reference Chan’s own work, is honestly adorable – while “New York, New York: The Visual World of Mutant Mayhem” justly celebrates the look and feel of the movie, with Rowe and Kassai exploring the deliberately messy visual sensibility. Rowe explains that his pitch was to make the film look like it was made by particularly excitable high-schoolers, the animation style emulating the scribbles on a notebook. Finally, there’s a “Learn to Draw Leo” instructional from the hosts at Art for Kids Hub. (It’s long, but it’s very detailed.)

If the purpose of Mutant Mayhem is to bring an ’80s property into the present day, Weird: The Al Yankovic Story is all about keeping its heart and feet firmly planted in the MTV era – so long as it serves the joke, anyway.

Eric Appel’s biopic about the pop-culture parodist – starring Evan Rachel Wood as Madonna, Rainn Wilson as Dr. Demento and an all-in Daniel Radcliffe as Yankovic – quickly reveals itself as a parody of the biopic format, as giddily irreverent as any of Al’s songs.

If you thought Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story was the last nail in the coffin of the musical biopic, think again: As brilliant as that film was, Weird finds a new way to mock the genre’s clichés and self-seriousness, turning the life of a universally beloved, just-successful-enough comedy figure into an epic Star Is Born riff on impossible success and spectacular downfall. If Weird Al Yankovic is known for anything, it’s for being one of the nicest and most dedicated performers in his industry, and Yankovic and Appel delight in reimagining “Al” as a debauched, simple-minded maniac whose path to fame and fortune is littered with the bodies of his rivals and also somehow Pablo Escobar.

Daniel Radcliffe is also one of the nicest and most dedicated performers in his industry, which makes casting him as the nightmare version of Yankovic even funnier – and that joke never runs out of gas, thanks to Radcliffe’s evident glee at letting the character grow more and more unhinged. Appel and Yankovic had me at their version of the eureka moment when Al transforms The Knack’s “My Sharona” into “My Bologna” – honestly, Radcliffe’s little fugue state might be the hardest I laughed at anything last year – but they keep finding new ways to take the piss out of both their protagonist and the musical biopic in general, until the whole venture collapses into an ouroboros of silliness in Colombia, where Al becomes the Rambo-esque one-man army the real Yankovic would pretend to be in a UHF fantasy sequence.

Writing about a Weird Al parody biopic is like dancing about architecture; there’s no way I can convey the joy this go-for-broke project gave me. I’ll just say that it was so much fun to watch it roll through TIFF over the course of the festival last year, as people went from vaguely skeptical on the way into a screening to broad, grinning delight on the way out. Radcliffe’s boundless energy, Wood’s eerie calm as the manipulative soulmate, the endless cameos from decades of comedy legends who either came up with the real Al or grew up worshiping him – that Boogie Nights pool-party parody feels like a group hug, somehow – it all just works, propelled by the meticulously executed song parodies that made the actual Weird Al a bona fide accordion-slinging star.

Shout! Studios releases Weird in a 4K combo edition that faithfully captures the overly polished presentation of Appel’s fake biopic, with the UHD disc offering the feature in your choice of 5.1 or 2.0 DTS-MA audio – a lively commentary track from Appel and Yankovic is also included – and a 2K version, along with the bulk of the extras, on the companion Blu-ray.

The making-of featurette is just a four-minute EPK, but the other extras are a great deal of fun: Yankovic and Appel introduce some 20 minutes of extended scenes and alternate takes, Radcliffe and Yankovic’s immensely charming appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers is offered in its entirety, there are additional interviews with Radcliffe, Wood and Appel (at TIFF!) for Variety and with Yankovic and Appel for The Wrap, and Yankovic, Appel and Wilson break down the pool party sequence for IMDb.com in two minutes flat.

A trailer gallery and a sing-along video for “Now You Know” round out the package, because Al Yankovic has always known what the people want. Turns out they also wanted this:

God bless us, everyone.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is available now from Paramount Home Entertainment in separate 4K and Blu-ray editions; a combo steelbook is also available. Weird: The Al Yankovic Story is available now from Shout! Studios in 4K/Blu-ray and Blu-ray/DVD combos.

In the next paid edition: Beloved cult classics Clue and The Warriors get a 4K upgrade just in time for Christmas. Upgrade your subscription and see what pleasures await you.