Review of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III (1993) by King S — 31 May 2011

I didn't like this film much as a kid, and now looking back on it, it had gotten much worse.

First, a brief recap of the plot. The son of an evil warlord in Japan in the seventeenth century is trying to escape to be with Mitsu, the leader of a rebellion against his father. However, he is captured and sent back to his father. Fristrated with his dad, he takes the sceptor which his father uses as a sort of moral booster to his men, but it is also a time traveling device. And when April in present day Manhhatan holds the device as well, which she got as a gift for Master Splinter, they switch places. Now the turtles have to go back in time to rescue her, which won't be easy as the warlord has contacts with an english weapons trader and they have only 60 hours to complete their mission or they'll be stuck in feudal Japan for good.

Adding the time travel aspect and sending the turtles back in time to Japan seemed like a good idea, as it would give the turtles a chance to visit a culture that they are heavily inspired from, not to mention would offer something knew to the franchise. Unfortunately the time travel aspect is poorly done and only hurts the film. Take the main plot for instance, which tries to be complex and fails miserably. The turtles lose the sceptor when they arrive, so they try to make another one, yet they accidentaly break it, before they realize that the real one was with Mitsu the whole time, making the whole making another sceptor nothing but a time waster. Also, even by regal time traveling movie standards there are too many plot holes (the method of how the sceptor works still makes no sense. Why was it April who was whisked away when there almost certainly should have been other people holding the sceptor in the 400 years between the two time periods the film is set in).

Granted plot holes are not supposed to be an issue in a teenage mutant ninja turtles movie. What matters is the action, right? Well, there are a total of perhaps three action scenes in the entire movie, none of which have the entertainment of the previous film. The rest of the film is filled with poorly written drama, the only bit of which I find moving at all was Rapheal being a sort of fatherly figure to a young boy, and the feeling of respect the turtles recieve admiration from the villagers instead of fear.

Even the special effects are terrible. Whether it was because so much of the film's budget was spent on the sets or because the Jim Hensonc company, which provided the suits for the turtles for the last two films didn't provide them this time, but the suits of the turtles look very fake. They feel like plastic toys whose mouths move weirdly. Oh, and the scene where (spoilers) the bad guy falls off a cliff? That's even worse than the suits.

I'll admit that Teenage Mutant Turtles isn't supposed to be high art. All I wanted was some entertaining action and some cheezy fun. This film couldn't even provide that. Even, if you're a turtle fan, you probably won't find much to enjoy in this film.