Turbo (2013)

(On Cable TV, July 2021) I’m always surprised at the films that fell in-between the cracks of my avid movie-watching. To be fair, animated family film Turbo came out at a time when I was busier raising an infant than going to the theatres. It was part of my Netflix watchlist for years, but it just didn’t feel essential. Honestly, even after watching it, Turbo still doesn’t feel essential—but the result is entertaining enough in a wholly familiar key. Blending a comic high-concept (a fast… snail!) with the icky creatures and racing hardware so beloved of the boys more likely to be the film’s audience, Turbo tells us about a snail with aspirations to race the Indianapolis 500. Obviously, we’re not aiming for strict mimetic realism here, so by the time the film uses a Fast and the Furious-type scene to infuse the protagonist’s snail DNA with nitrous oxide, you either hop on for the ride or get left behind. A few complications are required in order to make the result’s running length commercially acceptable, and those take the form of a taco restaurant co-owner and a half-dozen other snails (not nitro-DNA infused) with a thirst for speed. By the time the DreamWorks Animation film finally makes its way to Indianapolis, the ensemble cast of voice actors (led by Ryan Reynolds, but with notables such as Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Peña, Snoop Dog and Michelle Rodriguez all making themselves heard) has had the chance to deliver a few gags. Aimed at the under-12 set, the plotting relies a lot on a selective take of “There ain’t no rules saying a snail can’t race!” (Ignoring the rather detailed technical specifications dictating what can race in the Indy 500) but then again: not mimetic realism. What Turbo does amount to, if you’re willing to give it a chance, is a reasonably entertaining kid’s adventure with plenty of side gags to bolster a straightforward narrative. The technical details are convincing, and the film makes a surprising amount of mileage on anthropomorphizing creatures that, well, aren’t known to be cuddly and cute. It’s a rare Hollywood film to feature a French-Canadian character, but I have problems with Bill Hader’s terrible accent, considering that it smacked more of a caricature of European French than Canadian French. Still, much of Turbo works rather well — fast pacing, comic complications, great animation and done: an animated family film that’s worth watching if you haven’t already.