Turbo review

TURBO:

ZIPPING WITH NITROSOXIDE RACING ACTION, HUMOR, AND HEART!

By Nico Beland

Movie Review: *** out of 4

20TH CENTURY FOX AND DREAMWORKS ANIMATION

Turbo and his team of racing snails getting ready for the big race in Turbo

            Over the years DreamWorks has always seemed to create some great animated movies, with films like Shrek, Kung Fu Panda, and How to Train Your Dragon all becoming critical box office hits but cherished by both kids and adults. So with the success of their last movie, The Croods under their new distribution deal with 20^th Century Fox, things really started to speed up over at DreamWorks with their newest animated feature, Turbo, and it’s definitely a trophy worthy contender.

            A garden snail named Turbo (voiced by Ryan Reynolds-Green Lantern, The Croods, R.I.P.D.) dreams of becoming an Indy racer. His brother, Chet (voiced by Paul Giamatti-Win Win, Duplicity, The Haunted World of El Superbeasto) encourages him to give up the whole racing dream and start living his life as a snail.

            After a freak accident Turbo realizes he now has super speed and can now jolt his way into the race, with a little help from a supportive taco salesman named Tito (voiced by Michael Peña-End of Watch), a colorful crew of other snails led by Whiplash (voiced by Samuel L. Jackson-The Avengers, Django Unchained, Pulp Fiction), and Tito’s supporting team. Turbo can finally make his dream come true by entering the Indy 500 racing competition and prove to everyone that even a small snail can succeed in something big.

            Overall Turbo is a cute animated movie, the kids will love it, and most likely adults and some teenagers will find some amusement out of it. While I don’t think Turbo is nearly as great of a movie as How to Train Your Dragon or Shrek, it’s still a passing feature from DreamWorks, the writing is decent, the visuals and 3D effects are colorful, the characters are very likable, and the voice acting is very good.

Ryan Reynolds is very likable as Turbo, same with Paul Giamatti, Samuel L. Jackson is very amusing as the voice of Whiplash, Michael Peña is delightful as Tito the taco salesman, gotta have a loveable idiot in these movies, and Ken Jeong (The Hangover trilogy) is just hysterical as the old lady, Kim Ly. Other enjoyable cast members include rap artist, Snoop Dogg as the voice of the hippie snail, Smooth Move, Michelle Rodriguez (Avatar, Machete, Resident Evil) provides the voice of vehicle mechanic, Paz, and many others.

Another fine animated feature for 2013, I enjoyed the movie but I wouldn’t consider it better than Epic or Monsters University, but it’s right up there with Despicable Me 2 as an amusing family film for this year. It’s a perfect movie to see with your entire family, colorful animation and visuals, cool racing action, comedy, fun characters, and very talented voice actors, it’s nice to start with a good animated family movie like Turbo before moving into, ugh, The Smurfs 2!