Review of Turbo (2013) by Spikerr — 08 Mar 2014

DreamWorks Animation’s Turbo tells the story of Theo, a garden snail with large ambitions. His role model, Guy Gagne, inspires him to become a racer, even though he is ridiculed for his unrealistic dreams. After a freak accident involving Nitrous Oxide, Theo’s DNA and life will never be the same. After meeting several friends along the way, he and his human friend Tito start on a journey to win the Indianapolis 500, despite the arguments put up by their down-to-Earth brothers.

Turbo is one of the more disappointing animated movies of 2013, even more so after considering that DreamWorks produced this for $127 million. Upon first glance, Turbo appears to be a sort of Ratatouille and Cars hybrid. After watching the movie, it comes true, as it features the same themes as the former and the environment of the latter. DreamWorks effectively creates parallels between the two pairs of brothers – Theo and Chet; Tito and Angelo. However, it doesn’t do much else with them and the brotherly bond subplot, among many others, is lost in the wind due to its underdevelopment. Part of the reason for this is that the cast is made up of far too many characters. It gets to the point that the majority of the characters play too minor a part to justify development or a connection with the audience.

Children might find joy and excitement in watching Turbo, thanks to its flashy visuals – highlighted by a minor race sequence and Turbo’s neon-blue trail. Its auto-tuned song, “The Snail is Fast”, might have children singing it upon leaving the theatre, but may only serve to annoy the rest of us. Turbo attempts to introduce humour a few times with the eagles, tomatoes, and snail crew, but unfortunately falls short every time. A running gag, the crows snatching up the snails, hopefully will zip past childrens’ minds, as that won’t be a particularly enjoyable conversation to have with a young one.

One thing that parents may notice is the extremely blatent product placement. Brands on cars is perfectly understandable (although avoidable), but I’m sure DreamWorks could have made the same movie without a Verizon-branded phone or HP-branded laptops – no offense to either company.

A few plot-holes are present in the movie, namely the over-dramatized “permission to race” sequence – Tito earlier mentions that snails can race in the Indy 500. So why make such a big deal out of it? DreamWorks also feels the need to run an extremely minor and useless romance subplot in the background of the entire movie – for no reason except to maybe entertain younger audiences.

DreamWorks had a juicy premise with Turbo, but instead of fleshing out the characters and plot, fails to deliver anything substantial, instead giving quite a rotten movie.