Review: Turbo

A snail named Turbo (voiced by Ryan Reynolds) is an Indy 500 freak, and a freak accident during a street race sees him magically afforded the speed necessary to race like a pro. And play songs like a car stereo. One day he and his brother Chet (voiced by Paul Giamatti) are snatched up by a couple of taco truck vendors (voiced in not remotely racially stereotyped casting by Michael Pena and Luis Guzman), who run snail races on the side. For some reason. And when one of the men notices Turbo’s great speed, Turbo tells the man of his dream. And because this is a stupid movie, he’s able to hear the tiny snail’s voice and agrees to help him enter the race, to the derision and laughter of everyone else. And every other character in the film. Samuel L. Jackson voice a couple of other snails, whilst an unrecognisable Bill Hader voices the pompous French Indy car driver Guy Gagne.

 

Here’s where things get tricky, and possibly a little silly. You see, I had zero problems accepting talking planes with different accents racing around in “Planes”. Suspending disbelief is often necessary in children’s/family films. But a talking, normal-sized snail wanting to be an Indy 500 racing champ? The actual, regular-sized Indy 500? With actual cars and human drivers? This I have many, many problems with.

 

What a stupid, stupid little film, and it’s obvious the thought process for director David Soren (who worked on the dialogue for “Shark Tale”) and his co-writers Darren Lemke (“Jack the Giant Slayer”) and Robert D. Siegel (who worked on “The Wrestler”, of all films) began and ended with the mere idea of this premise. Any more thought than that, and someone would’ve realised that the central premise just plain doesn’t work. I’d be surprised if there weren’t even some kids out there who were thinking; ‘Hey, wait a minute, why would a car-racing audience want to see a snail racing against cars when you can’t even see the snail from the stands?’ This is one of the worst and most insulting animated films to come out in a long, long time, and even the high-calibre voice cast are mostly dull. It’s hard to make a bunch of snails interesting, if you ask me. Like the penguins in “Happy Feet”, snails just aren’t all that interesting or visually appealing. Paul Giamatti probably fares best as the title character’s best buddy, and is certainly more impressive than Ryan Reynolds in the lead, who is nondescript. I feel a bit sorry for Giamatti, though. Even when voicing a snail, he’s still playing sidekick to a heartthrob. But none of the characters really pop here, human or snail.

 

The best thing I can say for the film is that the car-racing scenes feature excellent, almost photo-realistic animation. And even then there’s the problem of making an interesting spectacle out of this teeny tiny snail trying to compete with the cars. It’s not so much the idea of an animal trying to outrace a bunch of cars that bothers me, nor that it’s a notoriously slow animal. There’s something clever in that at least. It’s that it’s a teeny tiny, itty bitty snail, colour-coded slug body or not. The scale makes for a boring race not only for the cinematic audience, but presumably the audience of racing enthusiasts in the film. How did no one see this? Like I said, they didn’t care. They came up with a one-joke premise and were happy delivering 90 minutes of just that. A dog would be hard enough to keep track of, but greyhound-racing is at least a known sport. But a snail? The scale is just wrong for a spectator sport, fictional kids animated movie or not, it’s a problem. The filmmakers seem to know this because they have Turbo’s ‘engine’ emit a bright blue light trail so you can see it. That doesn’t make it interesting for a spectator sport, geniuses. Even seeing him get squished wouldn’t be as much ‘fun’ as a car crash. The whole thing would have to be watched on the giant screen, and even then I think the animators get the scale of the big screen image all wrong.

 

Also, as much as some of the animation is almost photo-realistic, some of the scenery actually looks cartoony. It’s uneven, with the human characters in particular being poorly rendered. They look like video game avatars from five years ago. Not good, both “Planes” and the same year’s “The Croods” had much better and more consistent animation. The animated crows have nice texture, though, the best animated creatures in the film by far.

 

One of the other things I liked about “Planes” is that it was content to merely be a racing film, with not much meat on the bones, plot-wise. This is because the previous “Cars” saw fit to rip-off the plot of the mediocre Michael J. Fox comedy “Doc Hollywood”, something I still find bizarre of Disney/Pixar to do (Why not the much better “Teen Wolf”? Or “Back to the Future”?). Well, “Turbo” has a bit of a plot too, and although it doesn’t rip-off any Michael J. Fox films, it’s nothing special, either.

 

The title character’s turbo speed is silly, and a snail racing the Indy 500 with actual real-sized cars is a silly idea for a film, even one aimed at youngsters. It’s a one-joke premise, and should’ve formed the basis of a 10 minute short preceding a more substantial animated film. A fine cast (and Ryan Reynolds) can’t do much with this, it’s boring and not just juvenile, but infantile. Why would anyone want to watch a snail race the Indy 500 when you can’t even see it from the stands? No, this is just lazy and moronic, though it does contain Kurtwood Smith’s most animated performance to date. Yep, went there.

 

An embarrassing film, and anyone over the age of nine who enjoys this film should be ashamed of themselves. Yeah, parents aren’t gonna take offense to that at all, are they?

 

Rating: D+