Classic Movie Review Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Secret of the Ooze

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Secret of the Ooze (1991) 

Directed by Michael Pressman 

Written by Todd W. Langan 

Starring Paige Turco, David Warner, Vanilla Ice, Ernie Reyes Jr. 

Release Date March 22nd, 1991 

Published August 3rd, 2023 

If you don't realize that Hollywood studio executives are blood sucking snakes eager to suck the life blood out of anything that appears remotely like a hit, I have just one sequel for you, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Secret of the Ooze. Pumped out in less than 12 months after the original and without director David Barron, the man responsible for the charming first live action Turtles adventure, is as nakedly commercial and mercenary as Hollywood can possibly be. I'm sure that Barron's director's chair still had his name on it when he was already being replaced by the cheaper, less experienced but very eager Michael Pressman. 

Barron dodged a bullet, for sure. Had he stuck around to make a sequel to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sequel, he would have been blamed either for not giving the fans what they wanted, more Turtles, and, more than likely, he would be blamed for the film's mediocre performance in the rushed wake of making the first film and the studio bean counters urgency in making a second film in a hot, of the moment franchise. Naturally, not at all unexpectedly, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles lacks for not having the steady, ingenious hand of Steve Barron guiding the sequel. 

Instead, what we get is a movie that was made cheap and fast and not at all satisfyingly. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Secret of the Ooze isn't bad, but it is kind of cheap and ugly due to the nature of it being rushed into production simply to capitalize on the success of the first film. There is always going to be an icky quality to a sequel that exists purely as a way to wring a little extra cash out of an existing intellectual property. It's always going to feel like a movie that only exists as a product to be used as a flail slapped on to the moving going consumer with the sole purpose of separating people from their cash. 

Read my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Classic Movie Review Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3 (1993) 

Directed by Stuart Gillard 

Written by Stuart Gillard 

Starring Paige Turco, Elias Koteas 

Release Date March 19th, 1993 

Published June 2023 

It was clear that the makers of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise was fast losing steam right about the time Vanilla Ice appeared in TMNT 2 to rap the phrase 'Go Ninja, Go Ninja, Go!' It's at about that point that as a culture we had come to the conclusion that the necessity for a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle feature film was no longer a necessity. And yet, against all good sense and taste, the makers of the franchise pressed on with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles a screamingly minor entry in a franchise that had only narrowly found the energy for one and one half part of a movie and sequel. 

And yet, someone forked over a $21 million dollar budget to send the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles back in time to some loose configuration of a past somewhere in Asia. Time travel is yet another signpost in the sweaty, desperate creation of a third Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. Someone really promised more than they could possibly deliver to convince anyone that this was worth doing. Nothing in the film certainly justifies why this sequel was ever brought to the light of day, let alone unleashed on an unsuspecting public in movie theaters. 

My heart goes out to the parents of 1993 who must have napped or stayed in the car while their kids watched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3. The chore of sitting through this nonsense is like a parent being grounded by their kid and made to sit in time out for 90 minutes. This is a screamingly inessential film, a movie that has no right to exist in any way and yet somehow it does. Time, effort, and cold hard cash was dedicated to bringing this movie to the world and, for the life of me, I cannot imagine why. 

Read my full length review at Geeks.Media