Turbo

Voices of: Ryan Reynolds, Paul Giamatti, Michael Pena, Samuel L. Jackson, Luis Guzman, Bill Hader, Snoop Dogg, Maya Rudolph, Ben Schwartz, Richard Jenkins, Ken Jeong, Michelle Rodriguez, Chris Parnell
Directed by: David Soren
Rating: PG
Genre: Animation, Adventure, Comedy
2013

Times Seen:
Tim: 2

Summary: After an accident grants him super speed, Turbo (Ryan Reynolds) is determined to make his dream come true- to compete in the Indianapolis 500.

Review:

Tim: There's certainly many solid animated movies being created these days. And then there's Dreamworks, who gives us a movie about a fast snail. Because get it? It's such a contradiction! I'm not even all that opposed to a fast snail movie. It's not a brilliant idea at all, but okay. The fact that this fast snail races in the Indianapolis 500 was too much for me. The script as a whole is pretty bad, but that was the point that pushed me over the limit.

I know people get all worked up over the great animated movies, but I've been fairly hard on many of them. Just because the movie features beautiful computer graphics doesn't mean a whole lot if the story isn't up to snuff. That's the case here. First off, did we really need a movie about snails? I suppose Dreamworks was trying to branch out from the typical anthropomorphic dogs, bears, etc. But snails? That's actually something that many, many people signed off on? Here's the thing- snails are kind of stupid. They're slow, they are kind of gross. Why would you make a movie about snails? It's not a good idea. The fact that they are slow was certainly the attraction- I can just see the writers gleefully rubbing their hands together- "A movie about a fast snail! The world will applaud our brilliance!" It's not especially clever.

The rest of the story is quite forgettable. We are introduced to this snail world, which isn't all that compelling. It's fine, but only mildly interesting. Turbo gains super speed through some pretty unscientific means. Even up this point, the story was pretty decent. We're then introduced to this strip mall, filled with cliched characters. There's a taco truck. Although the story took an odd direction here, I was still following. When Turbo convinces the humans to enter him into the Indianapolis 500 (which is so utterly stupid for so many reasons), I really lost interest. Now, I'm all for suspending disbelief. I do it constantly in movies. You have to, if you hope to enjoy most movies. But, this film asks us to believe that a snail could compete against race cars (they would crush him!), that humans would willingly allow a snail to race against race cars, and even more absurd to me- that an untested snail would even be allowed to complete in the Indy 500. I mean, come on. The film throws us a press conference to show how it would be allowed, but it just defies all logic, even stretched as thin as you could make it. This scene was problematic to me because it finally revealed what a stupid idea the whole movie was. You could take a story about a fast snail and actually make it decent, but having the climax be him competing in the Indy 500 is not the way to go. It's just stupid and the bad idea eventually catches up to the film.

I'm not suggesting I hate Turbo. It's okay. Ryan Reynolds is decent as Turbo. He has the right voice to bring this character to life. Paul Giamatti was actually a wonderful addition- I love his voice and his distinctness added to the movie. He worked well opposite Reynolds and some of the better scenes involved these two. Michael Pena is always a great addition. While I didn't love his character, his voice work was exceptional. It was also fun to hear Luis Guzman and Samuel L. Jackson here. If you're looking for a reason to see this film, the voice cast is the chief one.

Again, I want to highlight that Turbo is a fine animated movie. It's nothing special, but I didn't hate the film. My three year-old son enjoyed it, although he was bored during the middle of the film (which takes forever to get through). I'm a bit flabbergasted that the movie received as many positive reviews as it did. In the world of animated films, this is quite forgettable. Dreamworks has made significantly better animated movies than this one.

* Update- watched Turbo a second time with my son. He didn't remember watching it the first time. I felt exactly the same way about the movie a second time. It's perfectly okay, but there's not much special about it. My son felt maybe slightly less anxiety the second time around (we have a great picture of him being nervous the first time) but he still felt like trepidation at the end. I will say that seeing Turbo twice is more than enough.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 6



If You Enjoyed This Movie, We Recommend: The Croods, Madagascar