With the diminishing returns of the second movie in the series and the characters popularity seemingly on a downward trend, Golden Harvest and New Line Cinema decided to bring back their Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise with a new spin hiring writer-director Stuart Gillard (best known, to me anyway, for giving us an lingering "waterfall shower" scene of Phoebe Cates in the Blue Lagoon rip-off, Paradise) to bring a new angle and production design to the series.

Starting off in 1603, Japan, we see some samurai's track down and take away a fleeing man on horseback. So far, so different. But not long after we're transported to present day where our turtle heroes are still goofing off, dancing around, and practicing Ninjitsu while their rat sensei, Splinter looks on.

But things are about to chance when reporter friend April O'Neill (Paige Turco, who replaced Judith Hoag in the second movie) drops by their place sporting presents she bought at a garage sale. Mixed in with the various junky items is a scepter that it turns out has the power for people to switch places with each other from different time periods.

Remember that opening? Well it seems that once April and the turtles mess around with the scepter, April is transported back to feudal Japan when she switches places with the young son of a Japanese emperor. It's up to the turtles to go back after her by switching places with some of said emperor's honor guard while Casey Jones (Elisa Koteas, returning from the original and given a dual role as one of Casey's ancestors who ends-up helping out) has to baby-sit our "fish-out-of-water" samurais. Along the way they also have to figure out how to return everyone back to their rightful homes.

Taking itself more seriously than the ridiculous second entry, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III gets points for trying something different and you have to give Gillard credit for taking the story in the direction he does even if he does tend to pile on the pop culture references and us the culture shock sub-plot a bit too much.

The turtle costumes here seem a bit more polished, but that's not exactly a good thing as they also manage to look the most fake of the three movies. It's certainly good to see the Casey Jones character back in the mix, but he's mis-used and barely gets to show any of the charisma Koteas brought to him in the original movie. And the fights are a tiny bit better done than 1991's The Secret Of The Ooze as well.

Let's just say that if you're a fan of the series then you're likely to find something here you'll enjoy. It's certainly the most ambitious of the three films (and it would be the last one thanks to a low box-office total), but you still need to have a high tolerance for actors in rubber turtle suits doing awkward martial arts movies to enjoy this. But I suppose it's worthwhile if you've ever wanted to see a turtle perform C.P.R... (Chris Hartley, 4/5/06)

Directed By: Stuart Gillard.
Written By: Stuart Gillard.

Starring: Elias Koteas, Paige Turco, Vivian Wu, Sab Shimono.