Michael Wilmington of "Los Angeles Times" noted that distributors deliberately kept the film away from critics. Despite mild praise for the look of the film, Wilmington called the first film a fluke hit and called this third film "sequel hell". James Berardinelli gave it one out of four stars, citing that "any adults accompanying their kids will have to invent new and interesting ways to stay awake. Not only is this movie aimed at young children, the script could have been written by them." "TV Guide" gave it two out of four stars and said in their review, "If the time-travel gimmick has to be employed twice in a row then it's probably best to banish these characters to a retirement sewer", when commenting about a possible future film invoking time travel. As with both of the previous films, the British PG version was censored due to usage of forbidden weapons (Michelangelo's nunchaku). For these scenes, alternate material was used. The cuts were waived for the DVD release. The German theatrical and video version was based on the censored UK cut; the DVD is uncut. The film was released to VHS and Laserdisc in 1993. The film has been released on DVD, and also two Blu-ray box sets with both of its predecessors.