Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: Turtles in Time [Blu-ray]

Great, but a bad end to an excellent trillogy.
Aww, the Turtles are done for it, their final movie. I feel this movie could have been better in many ways. The voice of Spliter should have been the same voice from the 1st and 2nd movie. The Turtle's costumes should have been the same as the 2nd movie. The enemies were too unbelievable. And the ending of the movie was just a little too weak for me. It's a good movie for a fan, but I only suggest buying it if you are a diehard Ninja Turtles fan.

A misunderstood movie
First, don't be mislead by all the bad mouthing. This is not the worst movie of all time. I thought this was a solid Ninja Turtle movie; I loved it when I was younger and still today I find it entertaining. Like it or not, this is the way the great live action trilogy came to an end. After this we had to wait years for TMNT, and that wait was not worth it. I don't know why it is so hard for some to appreciate this movie (I am still appauled by the amount of people who disliked Secret of the Ooze!!!)

Is the writing weaker than the previous movies? Yes. Is this a strong finish for the trilogy? No. However, I think all of the Turtle quality is there. One complaint I see is that the Turtle's mouths don't line up with the words well. In my opinion, no more so than in Turtles 1 and 2. I never even noticed the slip ups until they were pointed out and I started looking for them.

Someone said the story was far-fetched; the idea of time travel was too sci fi...

Give and Take
The first Turtles movie was great in the fact that it took on the tone of the comics rather than the TV show (more grim, more adult). The second, after much backlash from parents, went in the total opposite direction and turned it into camp. This installment is a nice ballance of the two.

Granted, the costumes are not up to par with the first two, and the plot is not the most original (nor feasible), but they take a back seat to the jokes. The first two TMNT movies focused more on plot and action with an occassional joke to keep things light. Writer/director Stuart Gillard's time travel story, while not the strongest, opens the door to many jokes and gags, which is what makes this movie stand out among the others. It's a nice change of pace, in my opinion.

Kudos to Elias Koteas in this film (he deserves to be the first in the credits). His 15th century counterpart isn't the best, but he makes up for it when Casey Jones is forced to "babysit" four ancient Japanese...

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