Turbo (2013)

 "Everybody’s got that one thing that makes them happy. For me, it’s terrifying blazing speed."- Theo

There's more to life than these, right?

From DreamWorks Animation studio that brought you Shrek, Madagascar, Kung Fu Panda and How To Train Your Dragon, comes a story about an ordinary garden snail named Theo (Ryan Reynolds), who had an extraordinary dream of becoming the fastest snail in the world. He had his dream finally comes true when a freak accident occur after he gets sucked into a racing car engine that uses Nitric Oxide. Now, super-powered with an amazing speed and renaming himself, Turbo, he tries to enter into the IndianaPolis 500 Racing tournament despite his brother Chet (Paul Giamatti) warning Theo that he could be killed. He finally finds help from a Taco truck driver, Tito (Michael Pena) and his friends at a run down strip mall, which includes a group of racing snails led by Whiplash (Samuel L Jackson), to enter him into the race which allows Turbo a chance to compete with his idol, Guy Gagne (Bill Harder).

I feel the need... the need for SPEED!

This movie uses the same premise as Pixar's Ratatouille where we have a certain theme going; in Ratatouille, it's all about cooking, and in Turbo, it's about racing, and we have our main character be in a completely disadvantage and unlikely to be in; Ratatouille: a rat, the disease carrying creature you wouldn't want to be preparing your food, and Turbo: a snail, the slowest animal on the planet that you wouldn't expect to be racing Formula one style. I mean, you even got Ratatouille's Remy and Turbo's Theo getting inspiration from their TV idols. The tables are then turned when events around our main character gives them a chance to fulfill their unlikely dream. There's also an element of the development in the relationship between the brother Theo and Chet which reminded me of the two gay shrimps from Happy Feet 2, where you got both of them going against each other and then have them dragged on into an adventure which later convinces the partner to realize there's more to their mundane and boring species' life, be it snails or shrimps.

Going all hyper-drive and warp speed

It's a no brainer that the snails stole the limelight. The snail characters were really hilarious and fun to watch. They even seem to know what they're doing compared to the humans and felt more like a SWAT team at times. Particularly, Samuel L Jackson's snail, Whiplash the leader of the crew. I loved his line about pretending not to hear what he just heard. It reminded me a lot of Sam's popular line from Pulp Fiction, "Say what again.. I dare you! I double dare you!"  The voice acting ain't that bad either. Ryan Reynolds did a brilliant job. His character had some charm to him. I really felt for Theo with his job at rotten tomatoes and his dream to race. Ryan nailed the snail perfectly. Design wise, the snails are really cute with their somewhat simplistic design and their big googly eyes and cute little whirly curly shells. I particularly like the cute snail animation, their snail movement through contracting and expanding their slimy muscular body and using their eyes like hands, banging on stuff, is quite cute and humorous. The design on the snail's racing shells were not that bad either. I quite like when they finally got the bill paid and they got higher ends parts and goes all transformers.

Don't you think it's a little racist to have Samuel L Jackson's snail all black? He's still cool by the way.

However, I can't say the same to the human characters. They weren't given as much attention as the snails. Not only their design were boring and less developed, with the exception for Guy Gagne, he did look like a caricature of stereotype Formula One racer. Many of the human characters do come off as somewhat annoying, especially Tito. Even the kid who recorded Turbo's race on the track was really annoying with his footage being repeated played and then autotuned. Not sure if the studio is expecting it to be a viral video by doing that, but it's downright annoying and nowhere close to being a double rainbow or Bed intruder. At the end of the film, the success of our human characters having the strip mall become a major attraction and had major success in their business was somewhat predictable and cliche. I was much happier with Theo achieving his dream than for our human characters having successful business.

Wait.. there's humans in this film?

The story was somewhat predictable. Apart from the racing scenes which felt a little bit more exciting, I was actually a little bored in the first 3/4 of the movie. I think this is because the concept had been used before as explained above. I just knew he was going to use his new superspeed powers to win the race and get his dream to come true. So, I wasn't really engage to the whole story until he loses his powers in the race. That's when you really begin to root for him when he's vulnerable and back to his snail limitation. Overall, this predictable plot has good character development and had some heart to it. I think this film would appeal more for children than adults, particularly boys. I would give this movie a 6 out of 10 Big Reds!

Click below to go TURBO drive into the trailer!

 Don't you think that energy drink has some salt content that could kill him?