Dir: David Soren Stars: Ryan Reynolds, Paul Giamatti, Samuel L Jackson, Michael Pena, Luis Guzman
PG cert, 96 min, Rating: 6.3/10
Every year brings us a couple of boisterous efforts from DreamWorks Animation, whose output varies from the smashing (How to Train Your Dragon) to the underwhelming (Monsters vs Aliens), and everything in between (Madagascar, Kung Fu Panda). Turbo is the tale of an orange snail, voiced by Ryan Reynolds, who finds himself imbued with supersnail speed, thanks to an accident on a highway with some nitrous oxide. Suddenly he can zip across whole rooms in the blink of an eye, leaving the rest of snail-kind, including his purple brother (Paul Giamatti), looking on in gawping wonder.
There’s only one thing for this newly gifted mollusc to do, and that is to sign up for the Indy 500, where he challenges the smarmy French-Canadian champ Guy Gagné (Bill Hader) to the cup, putting to rest the boring human fictions that only creatures with limbs can win car races, and that snails are slow.
Inspiration strikes occasionally here — the daily raids of crows on the snail community, which most family films would turn into a terrible plot point or excuse for suspense, happen with a plucking suddenness and exclamations of weary dismay, each time, which is a brave and darkly funny way to go. The movie threatens to lose its soul when we reach Indianapolis, with all the frenzied media hoopla attending Turbo’s enrolment — tablet videos, YouTube mash-ups, you name it. The more post-modern it tries to be, the less likeable it gets. The racing set-pieces are fizzy enough, but you have to wonder if teaching snails not to be content with their given snail speed is the right message to put out there. Rather than bionically enhancing all its characters, a better movie might have found ways to celebrate their sloth and slime.
