When I watched Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter I thought to myself “There’s no way a movie premise could possibly get more ridiculous than this.” Of course just a year later DreamWorks was there to prove me wrong with Turbo. However, for a set-up as absurd as a snail racing in the Indy 500, they play it surprisingly straight and while it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting they didn’t really do anything to make it memorable either.
The story centers around a garden snail named Theo (Ryan
Reynolds) or as he prefers to be called “Turbo.” He constantly dreams of being a world famous
race-car driver which (naturally) causes him to be the subject of ridicule
among his co-workers and embarrassment to his straight-laced brother Chet (Paul
Giamatti). Then one night Turbo gets
himself sucked into a drag racer where his DNA bonds with the car’s nitrous
oxide which gives him super speed and several features of a car (headlights,
radio, alarm, etc.). Shortly afterwards,
he and Chet are captured by Tito (Michael Pena), who runs a struggling taco
truck with his brother Angelo (Luis Guzman).
Tito starts by entering Turbo in snail races and predictably Turbo blows
the other snails out of the water. So of
course the next logical step is to enter Turbo in the Indy 500 (sure why
not?).
The animation is pretty good most of the time but for a
film with a plot as unique as Turbo,
it’s surprisingly lacking in imagination and originality. Almost everything that happens in this movie
has been done before and much better. Just
off the top of my head I can see them borrowing from Cars, Ratatouille, Spider-Man and even Talladega Nights. I might’ve
enjoyed this more if the writers took more chances to make something inventive. Unfortunately, Turbo takes zero risks and as a result every scene feels clichéd
and predictable. For example, when it’s
inevitably pointed out that snails don’t compete in the Indy 500, Tito uses the
old plot device that there’s nothing
in the rule book that says a snail can’t race (a statement so
ridiculous I don’t even know where to start) or as I like to call it the Air
Bud Defense. There’s also the arrogant champion
racer who seems to exist because DreamWorks felt an obligation to include a
villain.
There’s
nothing that’s particularly horrible about Turbo
but everything about it is just so bland that I felt absolutely nothing for
it. I didn’t feel love, hate or anger or
really any other emotion besides indifference.
Adults probably won’t get anything out of this but it’s a good way to
keep your kids busy for an hour and a half.
Grade: C+
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