Angry Video Game Nerd Episode 18 / 19: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III – Episode Review

Welcome to Season 2 of The Angry Video Game Nerd. What better way to start off than a movie review – a two parter movie review!

Wait, what? Okay, let’s go back to 2007; James was wanting to start up a movie review series, “The Angry Movie Nerd”, but it just never got going. As far as Cinemassacre is concerned, these episodes are not part of the previous season or this season (or really should be AVGN episodes at all), but for categorization on Wikipedia, and thus here, I’m grouping them as the start of Season 2.

“The Angry Movie Nerd” was a side series which never took off. I’d say that’s a good thing in the long run.

Anyway, to the actual episodes, James takes on the film Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III, while covering the first and second films and the fandom around TMNT in the early 90’s to provide backing information to explain just why the 3rd film is considered so poor.

I remember going to the drive-in theater (which amazingly, still exists here in Memphis) to see this one back when it was released. I recall liking it, but not enjoying it as much as the other films. As a kid I couldn’t put my finger on it, but years later, James’s commentary would I think pretty well address why I felt the film just wasn’t right.

I’ve re-watched the film recently (on Laserdisc, no less) and it was… watchable. As an adult I can enjoy the historical nuance to it (albeit it’s accuracy is a joke) but even then, the other elements of the film are just so bad it really can’t be enjoyed as much as the first two.

As for the AVGN style, this video has it – it still has the “early” nerd style as well, which adds a bit of charm to this episode, or, pair of episodes.. which are being counted as one. Yeah, it’s messed up, but eh, if you’ve got 20 minutes to kill and want some laughs, give this one a go. I’m pretty sure you will find something to laugh at!

A katana through the tape. Hey, it works.

Final Rating: 3.0/5

The episode is what it is. I do like James’s movie reviews, and while I think doing an AVGN style movie review series would have been cool, but I think it would have limited James’s ability to review films like he has since being critical (sometimes juvenile about it, no less) but at the same time able to praise a good film is something you can’t really do in an “angry” review style.

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