Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III (1993)

Runtime: 96 minutes

Directed by: Stuart Gillard

Starring: Elias Koteas, Paige Turco, Stuart Wilson, Sab Shinomo, Vivian Wu

From: Golden Harvest/New Line Cinema

 A movie I hadn’t seen since 1993… for good reason. My fandom of the TMNT franchise has been mentioned before; in the late 80’s through about ’92 I was a big fan of the Turtles. Mom took me and my sisters to see the first two theatrically. By the time of this film’s release, though, my fandom had waned (as had the popularity of the franchise) so it wasn’t until VHS at home that the third film was finally experienced. All I recalled about TMNT III was that it was bad and while that did not deliver a death blow to my fandom, that caused me to not see any subsequent Turtle films, a streak that will finally be broken w/ the new one coming out in a matter of days.

Just WHY I wasn’t a fan of this was long forgotten; in the years since, knowledge that the turtle and rat costumes were notably worse was mentioned… and boy were they right. Needless to say, in ’93 as a 12 year old I had never seen any actual samurai movies. Now that I have—this is a lame cosplay version of such that is pitiful even if I haven’t seen films like Seven Samurai, Hakakiri or the Lone Wolf & Cub series. Just how bad this was surprised even me.

The entire enterprise just doesn’t have a stupid as hell plot that squanders the rather inspired idea of the Turtles in Feudal Japan where those in 1603 Japan thought they were Kappa… a concept I definitely did not know in ’93. All of it is just bad: the story, the time travel device being an ancient scepter and the mechanics of such, the dialogue in 1603 Japan, the action, the “humor”, and even the idea of having a returning Elias Koteas in a dual role was wasted.

The ”story” as is involves April O’Neal accidentally time-traveling to early 17th century Japan and our heroes manage to figure out how to do same in surprisingly quick fashion. The time spent in Japan is various cliches done poorly, including an uprising against an evil Lord and the impact of the West on the country. Japan wasn’t actually isolationist at the time so a ship of English traders being there and a key part of the plot technically could have happened. That doesn’t mean this is worthwhile or that it isn’t boring, as Cripes is this about as exciting as watching a lotus flower grow.

TMNT III is just dull and dumb; my prediction for how much I’ll enjoy Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is still up in the air. However, it has to be better than III.