Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III (1993)

In the last couple of months we've had a couple of family movie nights in which we watched the first two Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movies from the early 1990s.  Good stuff!  Most recently we watched the 3rd in the series, released in 1993.  

Both of my kids liked it, and I enjoyed it too, but it didn't have the same entertainment value as the first two in the series.  That might explain why the TMNT movie series ended before being re-launched 14 years later.  Why was this one not as good as the first two?  I see several possibilities.

• It's tough to reclaim the magic of the original.  And yes, the original was magical and don't you say otherwise!  :-)
• They killed off Shredder in the second movie.  The lack of a powerful villain takes away some of the suspense.
• No Vanilla Ice.  Yeah, you read that right.  They should have brought Vanilla Ice back for the third movie!  :-)

Regardless of what I think about this movie, it's a good movie for a family movie night if you have elementary aged kids.  

Up next:  The rebooted TMNT movie from 2007.  I hear it's horrible but it earned higher ratings on IMDB (6.3/10) than the third Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies from 1993 (4.8/10).