Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III
Starring: Paige Turco, Elias Koteas Stuart Wilson, Sab Shimono, Vivian Wu, Mark Caso, Matt Hill, Jim Raposo, David Fraser, Corey Feldman (voice), Brian Tochi (voice), Robbie Rist (voice)
Directed by: Stuart Gillard
Rating: PG
Genre: Action, Adventure, Comedy
1993

Times Seen:
Tim: 3

Summary:The turtles travel back in time to ancient Japan.

Review:

Tim: The original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was great. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze was good. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III ends the trilogy as a franchise killer. There wouldn't be a fourth film for 14 years. This film isn't terrible, but another big drop in quality was enough to send this franchise to the deep freeze.

I know that the story is based on the comics, but I still feel like time travel was a seriously desperate ploy to breathe new life into the franchise. After the second film followed the first one a little too closely, part of me wants to applaud this movie for taking a chance, mixing things up, doing something different. That's what we want in our sequels- take some risks! Unfortunately, not all risks pay off. I give the film some credit for such a story departure. However, the idea of the turtles traveling back in time to ancient Japan just doesn't work. There's nothing in the first two films to suggest a magical artifact has time traveling capabilities. Yes, the idea of walking, talking turtles is absurd, but it's all based on scientific (which isn't scientific at all) mutation. To suddenly introduce time travel, without even connecting it to pseudo, quasi-science just feels absurd. The rest of the movie never manages to overcome that initial problem.

Since we have to go with it anyway, we watch the turtles travel back in time. There's a lot of mumbo jumbo about replacing one of them with someone from the past- you can only travel back in time if someone of your equal weight is holding the scepter... or something like that. And then, we see the four turtles all travel back, and four guardsmen come into the future. This is a small thing, but we're expected to believe four roughly similar size people all grabbed the scepter at some point, just as the four turtles grabbed the scepter. It felt like a massive coincidence. If it took ten years for four people to grab the scepter, would the turtles have traveled back to that point? None of it makes any actual sense.

The scenes in ancient Japan are certainly different from what we're used to from this franchise, but they're nothing special. The turtles get caught up in between two warring factions. They befriend the villagers and fight with them to stop the evil tyrant. Honestly, none of it is especially memorable. While you're watching the movie, it's easy to get into it because it's nearly constant action and humor (which, by the way, isn't as strong as the first two films). However, when you finish the movie, it's hard to remember many of the details, as they weren't all that interesting.

Paige Turco is fine once again as April. I didn't love anything about her performance, but it was at least equal to her performance in the last film. I loved seeing the return of Elias Koteas. He played two roles in this film and it was significantly better for it. The guy is just a good actor. The rest of the cast was fine, but it was pretty obvious no one was shelling out (get it?) big bucks for especially talented actors.

While Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III isn't a total disaster, it's by far the worst movie in this trilogy. With a big drop off from the second to third films, we're now a far cry from the heights of the original. I appreciate the attempt to do something different with the time travel story, but it just reeked of desperation. The gamble doesn't pay off, and it would take years to resurrect the franchise.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 6



If You Enjoyed This Movie, We Recommend: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze