40. Turbo
Turbo is a movie about a snail named Theo Turbo (Ryan Reynolds) that wants to go fast and win races. He’s not like all the other snails. He likes going fast but all the other snails don’t like that. They like tending gardens and shit and say to him stuff like “Be normal” and what not. His brother Chet (Paul Giamatti) keeps bailing him out of the trouble he’s in but eventually an incident with a lawn mower gets the both of them fired. This incident happens after Turbo falls into a tube of Nitro-stuff and it mixes with his blood to give him Flash-like superpowers.
So after that happens they end up far from home and rescued by a guy named Tito Lopez (Michael Peña) who sells tacos with his brother Angelo (Luis Guzmán). There they meet a bunch of kooky humans who are all into snail racing. The snails they race are also a collection of weirdos led by Whiplash, whose voiced by Samuel L. Jackson. He shouts a lot and it’s always funny. The other weirdos are voiced by celebrities too. Smooth Move is voiced by Snoop Dogg, Burn is voiced by Maya Rudolph, and Skidmark is voiced by Ben Schwartz. I heard the Sonic the Hedgehog and Dewey Duck in him instantly. There’s one more snail named White Shadow whose voiced by a guy named Michael Patrick Bell with no Wikipedia article so I’m assuming he’s not a huge celebrity. It wouldn’t surprise me because all this snail does is show up to whisper “WHITE SHADOW!” and then retreat into the shadows. It’d very weird if they had paid a celebrity a bunch of money just to do that.
That said, it’s a bit weird that they’re all voiced by high profile people regardless since they don’t have a TON to do in the film. Their contribution isn’t to be sneezed at of course. They show Turbo the ropes of their racing plaze, humble him a bit despite his fancy new powers, and bail him out of trouble pretty much every single time he messes up on the race track.
Oh yeah, he gets to go racing on an actual race track. A bunch of people end up seeing this fucking snail race and a chant gets going to let the snail race. “Whoa! That Snail is FAST!” said one guy and then a meme in their world was born, followed by a pretty kick ass song.
One final push from this snails’ hero, Indy 500 Champion, and dude with the funniest marketing face ever, Guy Gagné (Bill Hader) gets our snail in the race… but we find out that this French-Canadian man is actually eeeeeeeeevil and only got Turbo in the race for the publicity that comes with beating a meme in a race.
Does Turbo beat his former hero in the race? Can he convince his brother Chet to stop being such an annoying fucking downer so that he can have some familial support? Have you seen any other movie ever? Then yes, of course he does.
This isn’t a bad movie at all honestly. It’s not. It looks really good. The characters are all fun and charming. The final race at the end is easily the best part of the film because despite what I said above about it being predictable, I didn’t really know if Turbo was going to win in the end or if they were going to do that thing that some movies do where the hero doesn’t win but they’ve won everyone’s respect. I didn’t want that for this film. I wanted him to win.
Other than that, the rest of the film is basically about what you’d expect from this kind of plot. There really isn’t anything more to say about it. It’s not really something that comes with a huge big interesting lesson you’ve never seen done before. Even it’s premise isn’t all that weird. Snail go slow and suddenly it go fast. Let’s have it race in the Indy 500.
You can kind of tell that they weren't really cooking with much for this one because the goddamn trailers for this film spoil the supposed "twist" regarding Guy here. It's supposed to be a twist in the film that he's an asshole but the trailer company did not give a fuck about that. Also, who cares? It's a silly, predictable, seen-it-a-million-times twist. Oh no. The really nice guy I looked up to actually sucks. Wow.
Strangely it's premise isn't quite weird enough to save it from being ball-less in every other department. Again, I enjoyed myself well enough watching it but that's honestly probably because it uses a formula that works. But that formula has been done to death a bajillion times already. There's nothing here that necessitates a watch but if you ever decided to watch it you'd be perfectly fine, I'd imagine.
If you want to see a feel good movie about a snail doing a race than knock yourself out. Turbo is definitely a film that does that.
That Snail do indeed be fast though.
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23 Mar 2025 20:05 CET
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