Jamie
Let me take you back to March 19, 1993. TMNT 3 is hitting theaters, but to much less fanfare than the previous entries. While The Secret of the Ooze has Kevin McCallister don a Ninja Turtle mask in an embarrassing advertisement, the third flick wasn’t even the first and biggest advertisement of the day. That would go to Bridget Fonda’s Point of No Return. The TMNT ad is mostly just the poster (although I do like at the bottom where it tells you to pick up the Dell Paperback… don’t mind if I do). The much more interesting part of the NYTimes film section that day is the ad for A Far Off Place, which also features the ad for the last of three Roger Rabbit shorts:
I realize now that I’ve only ever seen the one featured before Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. Not surprising since the second featured before Dick Tracy, which I barely remember. A Far Off Place? I don’t remember that film at all. A small, but interesting tidbit is at the bottom of this advertisement it tells you to “Watch the Academy Awards March 29th on ABC” for reasons that elude me.
To recap, the Turtles are back, Jack! Back in time, that is. After April picks up a magic scepter from a flea market, the Turtles are shocked when it inadvertently sends her back in time, bringing a Japanese prince, Kenshin, in her place. Turns out it’s connected to Feudal Japan and Kenshin was in the middle of trying to convince his father to give up his warlording and stop buying weapons from the eeeevil English traders. The Turtles know what they have to do and go back in time themselves, bringing a bunch of warriors back in their place. Fortunately Casey Jones is also back (Jack) and ready to babysit. Back in time, Michelangelo is quickly captured, while the rest of the Turtles just as quickly rescue April and a pointless Casey Jones lookalike. They go off in search of Michelangelo and find him holed up in a rebel village. A fight with the English traders soon ensues and the heroics of the Turtles ingratiate them with the rebels. They spend a bunch of time trying to replicate the scepter, but it’s pointless because really the villagers hid it in hopes that the Turtles would stay and help them fight. Again, pointless, because the Casey Jones lookalike steals it and the Turtles have to chase it back to the warlord’s palace. A fight ensues and the Turtles win (duh). With the scepter in hand they prepare to head home, but a couple of them pointlessly want to stay, but are convinced not to. At this point a pointless thing happens where Michelangelo misses grabbing the scepter and seems to be trapped in time… but then they just use the scepter again and he’s fine. Weird. Anyway, it kind of peters out after that. THE END.
I can forgive The Secret of the Ooze. I can’t really forgive TMNT 3. Everything was downhill in terms of the technological achievement of the turtle suits. By the time you reach the third film Splinter isn’t just relegated to sitting in one spot (which was always the case), but looks like a Chuck E. Cheese robot and the Turtles mouths are horror shows every time they talk. From there the entire concept of the film is one contrived plot point after another. So many pointless things occur just to get to another pointless thing (if you didn’t get that from my synopsis). The only good thing I’ll say is that they did get the Turtles out into the wilderness of Feudal Japan, so that was kind of interesting to see. Oh, and all the films are blessedly short. Unfortunately the film’s shortness couldn’t make up for what was clearly the last legs of the franchise’s cinematic aspirations.
Hot Take Clam Bake! Splinter definitely was hoping that the warriors that were transferred through time to NYC would show up in his sewer naked. Don’t know what I’m talking about? Let me set the scene. Everyone is ready to go back in time to rescue April, but they know that whoever comes through the portal shows up in the clothes the person was wearing that they exchange with. Michelangelo recognizes this and rightly throws on some board shorts and has a bunch ready for the other Turtles to throw on. They don’t wear clothes, after all. But Splinter jumps in to be like “No! I mean… uh stop with this silliness, we don’t have time” and doesn’t allow them to don the board shorts. Of course one warrior shows up wearing Mikey’s board shorts and the rest are (confusedly) just wearing their underwear, which seems to break the rules they laid out for us. I’m sure that perv Splinter was sorely disappointed. Hot Take Temperature: Volcanic heat of Mt. Fuji
Patrick?
Patrick
‘Ello everyone! Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III. Shoot. You know what we forgot in the first two films? Racist caricatures of Japanese people! *Looks over at the foot clan* Hmmmmm, nevermind. Let’s go!
By the way, I know that the foot clan in the movies were all street urchin white kids from New York City. I’m not sure that makes it any better.
When I started this film I literally gasped. I’m not joking. They switched up the animatronic faces from the second film from the Henson Company to some other garbage outfit, and they RUINED it. Look what they did to my beautiful boys! They can barely emote. Their mouths move too much, and they have constant creepy rictus grins, and their lips form weird pointed triangle shapes constantly. Horrible. F-. Get it out of my sight!
I can only imagine what the tv show must have been like … hopefully they didn’t even attempt the animatronics and just had the mouths move vaguely up and down instead. (Oh no I just checked and not only is it worse, but there are terrible sound effects and Mikey gives off a serious sex pest vibe slobbering all over Venus De Milo).
It’s actually so bad in this film that they have them cover their mouths with masks for a good chunk of the film. Probably for cost saving and to avoid too much difficult ADR, but it did save me from having to look at their horrible mouths any more than I already had to.
Time travel. The laziest of all options. Bah! Honestly, if they were going to go that route, it would have been far more interesting to have like … Shredder’s ancestor come through the portal into New York City and for the turtles to have to get him back out.
A complete waste of the wonderful subway set they discovered in the second film too. You really only get to hang out with the pretty bad Casey Jones story.
I’ll just leave it with this: I cannot believe that for even a second the Turtles thought: hey, we’ll stay in Feudal Japan and leave some samurai chilling in NYC for eternity. Also, they never ever explain where the prior turtles from the scroll came from. Are we to think that they would come back to Japan again at some point to make that all consistent? Maybe.
Definite Planchet (Who?) for the bumbling evil doer’s assistant, although that could really be its own thing (and might be, I might have mentioned that in a prior Who section). Setting as a Character (Where?) for feudal Japan for sure. And an Exact Date (When?) for 1593 which is mentioned on the poster. A solid MacGuffin Kind Of (Why?) for the magical Japanese torch thing, although we know precisely what it does, it sends people back in time.
Read about my sequel to this film in the Quiz. Cheerios,
The Sklogs
Bad Movie Twins 