The third Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film was written by and directed by Stuart Gillard. While the source material has indeed had the turtles to feudal Japan, the subject matter was, once again, redesigned to be more kid-friendly. In fact, the turtles barely use their weapons through the course of the film as it would be deemed less than suitable for families.

Paige Turco returns as April O’Neil (and looks stunning doing it), Elias Koteas pulls double duty, not only as Casey Jones, but as an English sailor caught up in events back in time. Sadly, he’s wasted, there’s not much there for him to do – he seems to want to bust loose and be a little more in line with his character in the first film, and everyone else is denying him that.

When April finds a magic Japanese scepter at a flea market she triggers it by accident. This delivers Prince Kenshin (Eiden Hanzei) to the present, and traps April in the past. She is held prisoner by Kenshin’s father, the evil Lord Norinaga (Sab Shimono).

Norinaga is in the middle of a civil war, and is aided by the British sailors led by Walker (Stuart Wilson), who promises to supply him with weapons.

Figuring out how to travel back in time, the turtles leave Casey to babysit the Prince, and the swordsmen who pop in when they swap temporal places.

Soon, Leonardo (Mark Caso, voice by Brian Tochi), Raphael (Matt Hill, voice by Tim Kelleher), Michelangelo (David Fraser, voice by Robbie Rist), and Donatello (Jim Raposa, voice by Corey Feldman) are caught up in ancient times.

They have to find April, help the rebels in their fight against Norinaga, and get back to the future before time runs out.

It’s not completely horrible, but it’s not great. It pales next to Secret of the Ooze, which also wasn’t the best, but had charm.

The turtles also look noticeably different as the Henson Company was not involved in the film.

For all its faults, I really do dig the Turtles, and love seeing them on the big screen. Having said that, I still haven’t been able to bring myself to watch the Michael Bay version, the turtles look terrible, and it doesn’t seem to have a sense of fun about it. Which, say what you will about this entry, it definitely wants to be fun. But they’ve left behind the older fans and leaned into the kiddie factor.

Which was a bad choice.

The first two films were fun, goofy, and enjoyable. This one needed more of that. I have no problem with time travel stories, even if the time travel itself seems faulty and makes no sense, but this one needed to be developed a little more.