Runtime: 1 hour, 36 minutes
Rating: PG
Director: David Soren
Quick Impressions:
Remember Ratatouille? Remember Cars? Remember The Fast and the Furious? Do you know what a snail is? Are you familiar with the Indy 500? If you answered “yes” to all five questions, then you’ve already seen Turbo. Take my advice. Save yourself the price of a movie ticket and spend that hour and a half of your life making tacos with Samuel L. Jackson instead. (Or if that’s not an option, just go ahead and make tacos alone. The important part is that you do make those tacos…especially if you decide that you do want to risk the movie after all because, if there is one thing Turbo will inspire you to do, it’s eat tacos.)
This movie came out while we were on vacation, and (based on the previews) I was not too broken up about missing it. Both our children, however, (the ten-year-old boy and the four-year-old girl) have been absolutely dying to see Turbo. So we went. My husband and I went with pretty low expectations. Usually that works for me. I go in with low expectations, and the movie exceeds my expectations. This time, though, I went in with low expectations and the movie failed to meet even those.
Now don’t get me wrong. It was not horrible or painful or anything. But as the opening credits rolled, I thought, It’s funny that this is probably one of the weaker animated films of the summer, and yet I bet it’s still so much better than the cheaply animated, thinly scripted dreck that we got when I was my kids’ age back in the 80s. I mean think about it. Until The Little Mermaid splashed onto screens in 1989, we only had any decent animated offerings at all because Don Bluth decided to break off from Disney and go rogue, creating competing features that were of far superior quality. But even with a second studio dedicated to creating animated features, since everything was hand drawn, we still only got a couple of new movies every two to three years. I mean, in between there was relatively low budget stuff that spent a few weeks in the theater and then quickly came to VHS or even TV—stuff like The Care Bears Movie or The Secret of the Sword. Early on, as I watched, I thought, It’s funny because even if this movie isn’t great, I’ll bet it’s so amazingly superior to the “not great” cartoons we got when we were kids.
But by the middle of the film, I had realized with a sigh, Yeah, The Care Bears Movie is probably better than this. It has a better story for sure, and it certainly got more attention with that evil demonic book stirring up tons of controversy.
Now is Turbo horrible? No. Is it hard to watch? No (though at times it’s a bit boring). It’s biggest problem is honestly just that it’s a bit thin. Like all Dreamworks features, it delivers some lovely animation, and it has a fantastic cast. But even though the premise is quirky and cute, the story is lacking. I mean it’s seriously lacking. Not much happens and there’s very little doubt or urgency involved. Also, with three screenwriters working on the script (plus, as I noticed in the end credits, contributions from Nick Stoller, who I assume is Nick Stoller The Muppets guy) you would think somebody would have realized the movie needed some dialogue.
The insanely wacky, kooky, weirdly hilarious energy of the last twenty minutes or so makes the movie worth watching for sure, but I’m not sure I’d be too eager to watch the whole thing again just to get to that brief reward.
The Good:
There are good things about Turbo. The best thing is Samuel L. Jackson. I don’t know if he’s good at improv, or if the screenwriters realized that if you’ve got Sam Jackson in your movie, you’re morally obligated to give him a good part, but for some reason, Whiplash is conspicuously more entertaining than anyone else in the movie. I actually laughed at his jokes (or smiled at them anyway). And at several moments, I said to myself, For some reason, the snail who sounds like Samuel L. Jackson is conspicuously better than everybody else in the movie. I wonder who’s voicing him? It took me until the middle of the movie to think of Occam’s Razor: If he sounds like Samuel L. Jackson, then he probably is Samuel L. Jackson. For a long time, I had trouble believing it because the actual Samuel L. Jackson seemed too high powered for the movie.
But actually Turbo has a very high-powered cast of desirable, A-list actors doing the voices. The problem is, most of them aren’t given much to work with or the opportunity to improve on the material they’re given. As a result, some voice performances work out better than others, but none of them are as good as they could be. (As Burn, for example, Maya Rudolph manages to work in a genuinely smile-worthy running joke about “Boo,” but that’s it. They don’t let her say or do anything else. So she really does make the very most of her role that she possibly can, but for some bizarre reason, none of the characters is ever allowed to say more than a line or two here and there.)
The crew of racing snails is really cute and charming in theory, but then in practice they’re hardly in the movie. I mean, they’re there, but they don’t get to say much, and what they do (though important) isn’t presented in a terribly captivating way.
Aside from Jackson, the strongest performance in the film comes from villainous, egomaniacal racing star Guy Gagné. I thought, Wow, this guy is giving a really strong performance. I love his accent. Wait. Is he supposed to sound Spanish or French? The name looks French, but the accent doesn’t always sound French. Maybe it’s a Spanish actor—or even a Mexican or Central American actor—trying to do a French accent? The voice is so captivating, and he’s being really commandingly funny, but there’s something very vague and wandering about that accent. Maybe it’s a French star who lived part of his life in Mexico…
Yeah, it’s Bill Hader. But he does give a fantastic performance. I think this part is a much better showcase for his talents than his leading role in the Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs franchise. (That’s a good movie, but the role is kind of bland.) (I wish he could do a movie where Stefon meets James Carville, but I know that would never work as a movie. Maybe he could just get in character as Stefon and come over to my house and talk. I’m sure he’ll go for that.) It’s a shame there isn’t a stronger movie around Hader’s compelling, villainous voicework.
Tito and Angelo are both very compelling, likeable, and well voiced characters, too. (I recognized Luis Guzmán immediately but could never place Michael Peña until the credits.) Actually Tito is probably the best character in the film. To me, he was a far more interesting protagonist than Theo the Snail. He’s just so sweet and likeable, and he seems pretty realistic, like some guy who could actually exist, somebody anybody could know. Plus their tacos look so delicious! Why aren’t they selling those amazing tacos? At several points, I wanted to yell at them, “Forget about the Indy 500! Just move to Austin! Park your food truck anywhere. People will buy your tacos. I promise!”
Ryan Reynolds is pretty easy-to-like as Turbo, but the character is strangely un-interesting. (This is often the problem in Ryan Reynolds movies, and it makes me feel kind of sorry for him.) At several points, I found myself zoning out and remembering, Didn’t Ryan Reynolds make that one arthouse, festival type film where he spent the whole thing trapped in a box or a coffin or something? I wish I were watching that movie right now. The movie about the guy trapped in a box for ninety minutes sounds a lot more interesting than this. (Never a good sign as far as the film is concerned, but Reynolds does have an unmistakably appealing smooth voice.)
The movie does have some reasonably good music. I mean, like everything else in this movie, most of the songs in the soundtrack are songs everyone has heard eighty million times before (or they’re new pop songs that sound like songs everyone has heard before). But it’s still mostly cheerful stuff that gets a lot of radio play because everybody kind of likes it well enough. To be honest, I didn’t even notice Henry Jackman’s score, which is probably a point in its favor, but my kids enjoyed the music enough that I’d consider buying the soundtrack to play in the car.
The movie also has a very lovely opening. I really enjoyed the beautiful, relatively serene (except for the odd crow) scenes at “the plant.” Well, more accurately, I enjoyed looking at them. Turbo is a bit odd because the beginning is beautiful but dull, and then the middle is more exciting but kind of ugly. The scenes set near Tito’s are amazingly like that awkward dead spot that seems to exist in the older, rundown parts of places that are in town, but not downtown. It looks like you’re watching the opening of 1970s era Sesame Street and nothing has really changed since then. Everything’s vaguely dingy and concrete gray and full of oil spots and rectangles. That was one thing I genuinely found fascinating about Turbo. Clearly in this part of town, all the color is inside—the tacos are vibrant, the nails in the salon are unique and detailed, the girl in the garage has awesome hair, Richard Jenkins (wasted in this role) is selling really cool old-fashioned, hard-to-find toys. At first glance, the area just looks dingy, but the people who live there are still cool.
So you have serene, lovely, dull nature, kind of exciting but ugly urban areas, and then the best place of all, the hyper reality of the urban track at the Indy 500. Clearly, the lesson is, if you aren’t content to roll tomatoes in the garden, then you better have lots and lots and lots and lots of money because concrete isn’t very satisfying until you’ve poured millions of consumer dollars into it.
Visually, then, there’s definitely something pretty smart and intriguing going on with the movie (though I was surprised Wally Pfister consulted because it’s not that impressive), but there needs to be a more substantial, captivating story around it—because this is a movie, not studio art. Most of the time, Turbo does look pretty cool, but Tilda Swinton sleeping in a box for two hours would make a more exciting film!
My four-year-old has been very excited to see Turbo all summer. For weeks on end, we’ve been taking a picture with him every time we go to the theater. But about five minutes before Turbo finally got his powers, she sighed and told me in an anguished voice, “I just don’t think I can watch the rest of this. It’s too sad! I may have to go to sleep. This is just too sad. I don’t know.” She did, however, find the scene featuring Turbo’s newly blue, glowing heart fascinating (I think partially because she’s really interested in the circulatory system, and partially because something was finally happening.) Until she started asking questions (“What is that thing inside him? That can’t be his heart! Did his blood turn blue?”), I had actually kind of zoned out thinking about how my husband’s parents used to drag race together—apparently he would drive and she would shift—and how unlikely I am to have similar cool adventures since I’m not much good at driving or shifting. I zoned out a lot during this movie. A lot. There are some really fun sequences, but they’re not long or frequent enough to sustain a feature length film. At the end of the movie, my daughter was sitting on the edge of her seat cheering, “Turbo! Turbo! Turbo!” and I was beside myself with laughter. But then five minutes later, it was all over.
Best Scene:
Once the Indy 500 starts the movie gets so much better. That is pretty much the end of the movie, but the end is totally great.
Funniest scene:
“He’s gradually gaining on you!” (I think that’s the line.) Ken Jeong’s character is so over-the-top that she borders on annoying—and in fact some small children in the theater thought she was scary—but that line made me laugh so hard. We were all dying. It was so hilarious. Logically, of course, that moment never should have been happening for so many reasons. It was totally wrong for at least one of the characters involved. But it’s hard to ignore the fact that it was the only genuinely hugely entertaining part of the entire movie. Too bad Turbo wasn’t ten minutes long. It would be Oscar worthy. (Of course, it might still win a Golden Globe as is. The Hollywood Foreign Press is full of surprises!)
Best Musical Sequence:
Apart from the ending, there’s really only one good part of Turbo, and that’s when the snails remix the youtube video and send it out to everyone, and it goes viral. They play the song again during the end credits, and it’s infectious. “The snail is fast. The snail is fast. The snail is fast fast fast fast fast!” It gets stuck in your head. (And then in my head, it quickly gets mashed up with that Skrillex song that plays over and over again in Spring Breakers. The one that sometimes goes, “Yes! Oh my God!”)
This sequence should really resonate with anyone who has a ten-year-old kid with a smartphone. My stepson is constantly finding weird video clips to play us—mostly variations of “Gangnam Style” and parodies of Miley Cyrus, Katie Perry, and Taylor Swift videos. He also likes anything that is funny like the movie The Master of Disguise. (Dana Carvey? Pistachio Disguisey? Anybody seen that one? I have.) So beyond being catchy “The Snail is Fast” really brought a smile to my face.
In fairness, we all also enjoyed the bit featuring the random radio stations. The assorted, casual early deaths were darkly funny as well.
Best Scene Visually:
My daughter found the heart scene—the one shown in the previews—captivating, fascinating, thought-provoking, and remarkable. I know because she remarked on it. At length. I couldn’t seem to get her to stop whispering.
Personally, the scene that I am going to remember most involves the crows at the end, in part because it reminded me of the ending of Dumbo—just when I thought this movie couldn’t possibly rip off anything else.
Funniest Moment:
I choked on a laugh when some random little kid on the other side of the theater yelled out—totally innocently, in sweet, at-most-seven-year-old excitement—“He’s faster than my mom!” Now that made me laugh. And it also made me feel vaguely sorry for the kid because you know there’s going to be some awkward moment about five years from now when he looks back and realizes in dismay, “Oh, those guys on the playground weren’t really my friends.”
The Negatives:
In an animated feature directed at children, a simple story is not a bad thing. But no story is pretty much always a bad thing, and here the story is so simple that it’s not even effective. Basic story elements appear to be missing, and the ones that are there don’t particularly make sense. For example, it’s so cute that the snails work at “the plant,” but what are they actually doing there? It’s cute but basically nonsensical. In Ratatouille, the other rats forage through garbage for any old thing to eat because that’s what rats do. But snails don’t work in tomato factories. (I mean, they hang out in gardens, but when was the last time you saw an army of snails busily rolling tomatoes around day in and day out?)
That brings me to my second point. Turbo is basically a less imaginative rip-off of Ratatouille (with a little bit of Cars thrown in). Being conspicuously derivative of a Pixar feature is not a good sign since at least half of the Pixar films are themselves shamelessly ripping off other movies. Cars, for example, is basically Doc Hollywood on wheels. A Bug’s Life owes a lot to The Three Amigos, and have you ever seen Jim Henson’s The Christmas Toy? I think Pixar is counting on the fact that most people haven’t! Then of course, there’s the fact that most of those movies that Pixar ripped off were already derivative in the first place. So Turbo is like an imitation of a reflection of a reflection of an imitation of a reflection of a reflection of an imitation of a reflection of a reflection of a cartoon snail voiced by Ryan Reynolds. And even that would be fine except Turbo basically brings nothing original to the table, it’s not particularly funny, and it doesn’t make sense.
I loved Bill Hader as Guy Gagné, and I can’t deny that the character is funny and provides what is without question the best moment in the movie. Still the character himself doesn’t make any sense. He starts off kind of like Ratatouille’s Gusteau but then quickly transitions into Skinner. Also in the first scene where you see him in the flesh, he seems so smart and publicity savvy, so conscious of how to create the kind of image that will keep the spotlight on him preserve his legacy. So why does he get so dumb at the end? Why go out of your way to look like a jerk and win when you could be a huge hero with “a tie.” What he should have done is so obvious. (Of course, it would be much less funny.) The thing is, is anybody really that threatened by a snail? Making Gagné into an arch villain is just silly and misguided. For one thing, the movie doesn’t need a villain. Adversity is the villain. For another, there’s really nothing so villainous (or even surprising) about a racing star who wants to win. I kept thinking, “Why are they trying to turn this into a remake of The Love Bug? This is so unnecessary!” But then I have to admit that turning the movie into a remake of The Love Bug did improve it. At least then something interesting is happening. (But seriously, who threatens a snail? If you’re going to take the trouble to reveal to a snail by himself that your kindness is just a façade, why not just squish the snail and throw it in the trash when nobody’s looking? I mean, if you’re already such a wicked madman that you’ll stoop to threatening a snail!)
The villain is not the only character who doesn’t get adequate development and doesn’t behave consistently. That’s pretty much true of everyone in the whole movie—except possibly for Theo (aka Turbo) and his brother Chet. Those two get a lot of screentime, and they are pretty consistent, but unfortunately, they’re pretty consistently boring. It’s not really Ryan Reynolds’s and Paul Giamatti’s fault. The characters are just a weird combination of underwritten and yet always talking. Paul Giamatti is better (though less likeable) than Ryan Reynolds, but that’s pretty much true in every movie.
But now Turbo isn’t just a rip off of Ratatouille. It’s also a rip-off of Cars. Remember Radiator Springs, the little town on Route 66 where nobody goes anymore since the new highway came through? Turbo ends up in a rundown strip mall that’s nearly identical—except this community is right off the 101, so I’m not sure why nobody comes through there. (Maybe it’s because the people who can afford to live in California can’t afford to eat out, get their nails done, keep up with their cars, or buy rare toys.) Maybe this is supposed to be an example of how the suburbs are dying in the wake of urban rebirth. I spent a huge chunk of the movie wondering about that—which seems good at first. I mean, that means the movie’s thought provoking, right? But actually, I wouldn’t have spent so much time ruminating over the problem of suburban decline if the movie hadn’t been so horribly boring.
Once Turbo meets Tito, the movie picks up a lot (but it still doesn’t go anywhere). Tito is a great character. He’s a dreamer with no idea how to be practical but a strong desire to do everything to help his brother. He’s by far the best character in the movie simply because he seems like a real, likable guy. Tito and his brother are the first reasonably well rounded, sympathetic, interesting, (comparatively) original characters to show up in the movie. They’re great characters. And the rest of the people who work near them have potential, too, but then…nothing happens. Turbo lines up all of these legitimately intriguing characters and then does absolutely nothing with them. The racing snails are cool characters, too, but they’re also strangely marginalized and limited. I don’t get it.
The set up we’re given doesn’t really make sense, either. Why do Tito and his friends race snails in the first place? I’d love to hear more about that odd (and potentially interesting, kind of quirky) community hobby. (And, as my husband points out, even if the rules don’t forbid a snail from entering the Indy 500, surely the snail must have a car. That wouldn’t be a big deal except the movie insists on mentioning the rules in the first place.) Also, if you don’t get a lot of business, and your business is driving a taco truck, couldn’t you just move it someplace else? (I realize that doesn’t solve the larger problem, but it’s a better quick fix for your problem than snail racing surely.)
Turbo just needs to give us more story, more jokes, more suspense, more drama, more development and better dialogue for the characters. Another way to fix it would be to make it shorter, and I mean much shorter. Show that Turbo wants to be a racer. Then show how “The Snail is Fast” goes viral. Then show the last part of the race. The End. That would be an amazing short. You’d need ten minutes at most. It would be awesome. There’s just not enough substance here for a feature length film.
If Pixar has shown us anything, it’s that you can totally rip off the plots of existing movies and use them to create another movie that’s funny, well-crafted, and highly enjoyable. Sadly, this movie is none of those things. It’s very ironic that a movie about a super-charged snail would move at an ordinary snail’s pace, but I’m afraid it’s true. More the problem is that it’s not particularly going anywhere, other than the finish line. Also, the part with the crows at the end kind of reminded me of Dumbo. I don’t know if that’s good or bad or how to feel about it. There’s also a scene that reminded me of Rango, but Rango’s another movie that borrows from innumerable earlier films (only it does it in a classy, homagey kind of way).
Overall:
Turbo truly surprised me. Both my husband and I went in with pretty low expectations, and it still failed to meet them. I was stunned. I remember a time when Pixar turned out excellent films, and every other movie from Dreamworks seemed like a slapdash, star-studded cash grab. In more recent years, with great films like Kung Fu Panda and How to Train Your Dragon, I thought Dreamworks had grown beyond that. But Turbo seems like a film out of time. Surely Dreamsworks of 2013 should not have made this movie. Back in the spring, The Croods was infinitely superior. Turbo is just not very good. In fact, it’s easily the weakest animated feature I’ve seen all year. Easily.
Now don’t get me wrong. If you’re desperate for something to see with your kids, spending the afternoon at Turbo will not fill you with bitterness, regret, or despair. It’s age appropriate and has lots of bright colors. The soundtrack is catchy, and last big scene is delightfully funny. But the movie is just weak. My husband and I thought all along that it looked mediocre, and it still managed to disappoint us. I guess it does have a useful moral. If you want something passionately, then make a lot of noise and fight for it because chances are, the person in charge doesn’t actually care as much as you do. Watching Turbo won’t make you claw your eyes out, but you might fall asleep.
By the way, if you do fall asleep, don’t worry. As long as you’ve seen A) Ratatouille, B) Cars, and C) a snail before, then you’ve already basically seen Turbo. So if you’re looking for a nice, cool, air conditioned space to sleep this summer, then hurry and buy a ticket for Turbo today.