Turbo
(2013)
DreamWorks
Animation has experienced a roughish ride of late. Too many of their pictures
just haven’t done the business. Rise of
the Guardians, the recent Mr. Peabody
and Sherman and last summer’s big hope Turbo.
I thought it would do well. I mean, why not? It calculatingly tapped into
Pixar’s success with Cars, and
layered on top a strong dash of Ratatouille.
Why wouldn’t undiscerning audiences flock to see it with their undiscerning
little monsters? I’m still not entirely sure. I mean; it’s a production line
assembled underdog story with barely an original bone in its 90-odd minute
running time, but its agreeable enough. At least DreamWorks have few pretensions
to artistic achievement, unlike the once great Pixar who are now adrift in a
creative void.
Part of the
problem may have been Turbo’s blatant
attempt to manipulate audiences, trying to beckon the Fast and Furious crowd (Michelle Rodriguez even voices a character),
and laying on a hip hop soundtrack while importing a selection of national and
ethnic stereotypes including a vain French Indy 500 champion (Bill Hader; those
dreadful Frenchies, eh?), loveably fat food-obsessed Mexicans (Michael Pena and
Luis Guzman) and streetwise urban snails (Snoop Dogg and Samuel L Jackson). Or
maybe failure was assured by another cast member; the kiss of death Ryan
Reynolds inflicts on any movie where he’s the lead (he voices Turbo).
Some have
suggested the movie is condoning winning at sport through doping, as it’s only after
the speed-obsessed Theo/Turbo is dunked in a tank of nitrous oxide that he
becomes an all-conquering racing champion. But really, this is more akin to
your classic superhero (it’s not as if he keeps having to top up, like Popeye
or Asterix). In which case his entering a race is also unfair. It seems
churlish too, in such an eccentric scenario, to point out that if Turbo is
allowed to win by crossing the finishing line automobile-free, then his
competitors should surely be permitted to sprint past him, sans car, on foot.
As with any
number of animations, CGI or drawn, the incidentals foster the biggest laughs.
They may not flow as freely as in the Madagascar
series, but much fun is to be had with the mollusc world. We haven’t seen much
of the micro life recently, although there were the competing Bug’s Life and Antz way back at the beginning of the CGI era and more recently Bee Movie. It’s very considerate of
these snails to consume only over-ripe fruit (perhaps to encourage kids to
encourage parents not to inflict carnage on their garden fauna?) but there’s
also an appealing casualness to the mortality rates in their world; “Welcome everyone to this monthly safety
meeting”, “Well, there goes Jerry”
as a snail is plucked into the firmament by a passing bird. There’s also a
wretched little snail-destroying child, a marauding crow getting hit by a bus
(the crows are decidedly non-anthropomorphic; I always find it curious how
animations pick and choose their animal identifiers).
Against
this, the constant antagonism towards Turbo’s dreams from his kin (a rare dud
from Paul Giamatti, although the continued mistaking Chet for a girl is amusing
“Why is this confusing?”; perhaps a
nod to most snails being hermaphrodites) is over-familiar and a little pedestrian
(“When are you going to wake up?” the
admonition that he is “chasing an
impossible dream”). Yet the whole remains lively, knows not to outstay its
welcome (a rarity now in a genre traditionally happy to wrap things up in well
under an hour and a half) and features probably the best role Samuel L Jackson
in a decade. He’s nigh on impossible to take seriously these days, churning out
the same over-emphatic performance in film after film. So how better to embrace
an actor who has become a walking cartoon than make him into one? I know, he
was in The Incredibles, but here
Jackson sounds not only as if he’s having fun but also he is funny as Whiplash. And you don’t have to see him
perma-glowering, which is a bonus.
Nothing the
big two released in 2013 was pronounced in any danger of being hailed as a
classic, or even particularly memorable, so it’s no wonder Disney regained its
animation crown with Frozen. The one
good thing about a string of underperformers is it puts the dampeners on sequel
plans. In other respects, it’s likely to foster the urge to seek safer and
safer sequel ground. But who knows, perhaps Turbo
will be a kick in the pants? Fun as it is, it couldn’t be more formulaic.
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