Review: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III

The plot this time out involves a magic sceptre…wait, where are you going? If I have to write this shit, you’ve gotta stick around and read it, OK? We’re in this one together! Anyway, there’s this magic sceptre and April (Paige Turco) and the Ninja Turtles (including Brian Tochi voicing Leonardo, Robbie Rist voicing Michelangelo, a returning Corey Feldman as Donatello, and newbie Tim Kelleher as Raphael) find themselves time-travelling (!) back to feudal Japan. There they confuse the hell out of a merciless warlord named Norinaga (Sab Shimono) and an unscrupulous English arms trader/pirate (Stuart Wilson). Meanwhile, back in the present (of 1993), vigilante Casey Jones (Elias Koteas) has to look after the Japanese fellas who seemingly swapped timelines with April and the Ninja Turtles. So of course he shows them a hockey game on TV. Yep. Oh, and Splinter’s hanging out too. Vivian Wu plays a Princess in Feudal Japan, whilst Koteas turns up in a secondary role as a captured pirate named Whit, whose allegiance is unknown.

 

Yeah, this one sure does suck. A serious downgrade in both overall quality and budget, this 1993 sequel from writer-director Stuart Gillard (a TV veteran who previously directed a naked Phoebe Cates in the “Blue Lagoon” rip-off “Paradise”) bypassed cinemas altogether in Australia, and deservingly so. Truth be told, by the time it was released, I was well and truly done with Ninja Turtles. I had moved on to puberty and Pamela Anderson’s breasts by this time, so I probably wouldn’t have been interested in seeing it even if it did hit theatres. Whilst Golden Harvest are still behind it, Paige Turco once again plays April, and they’ve even brought back the services of Elias Koteas and Corey Feldman (voice only, for the latter) from the first film, there’s no doubt that this is cheap-arse stuff and really, really dumb.

 

The services of the Jim Henson Workshop (and therefore Splinter puppeteer/voiceover guy Kevin Clash) were not employed this time out, and the drop in quality shows all over the damn place. The rubbery turtles look awful, far too brightly coloured and the mouth movements are noticeably awkward. It’s cut-rate, as is voice actor Tim Kelleher as Raphael. How bad is Kelleher? The previously distinctly Brooklynite Raphael sounds woefully and unrecognisably generic. Worse, the former brooding member of the Ninja Turtles, who became a smart mouth in the second film, is just a big softie in this third film. Geez. The FX are cheesy, but that’s nothing in comparison to the time-travel plot. Yes, the ninja turtles travel through time in this one. Add to that a half-arsed ‘Hey, it’s you!’ re-introduction of Elias Koteas’ vigilante Casey Jones, and you’ve got yourself a seriously piddly film.

 

Stuart Wilson is usually good value as a villain, but he looks painfully bored, and Koteas looks like he’s being held at gunpoint. In fact, in his secondary role here, he seems so embarrassed by his own attempt at an English accent that he tries to mumble his way through it so we won’t hear it. We can hear it, Mr. Koteas and you’re lucky Dick Van Dyke made an arse of himself doing a cock-er-knee accent in “Mary Poppins” is all I’ll say. Sab Shimono, as the other principal villain is OK (he’s the only one not embarrassing himself), but that’s not nearly enough to save the film. Even Paige Turco has been better elsewhere, and sports an embarrassing hairdo I can only describe as ‘butch Kate Hepburn’. The turtles themselves are actually pretty tedious and samey this time out, despite the return of Corey Feldman voicing Donatello. Feldman does get the film’s only funny line, however when he falls on his back: ‘Help, I’m a turtle and I can’t get up!’. Yep, that’s the best line, folks.

 

Easily the worst of the Ninja Turtles films, and that includes the one with Vanilla Ice. This second sequel is just dumb and insulting. The plotting is stupid, the FX and puppets are cheap knock-offs, and the performances suggest a cast fully aware that this this is worth neither their effort nor your time in watching it. Really, really bad. I mean, this thing’s so cheap they couldn’t even afford pizza this time!

 

Rating: D