Life lessons found in tale of speedy snail
Turbo finds its way through prickly bushes of cliché
Gardeners will shiver in their rubber shoes, but the rest of us will no doubt enjoy the sight of wisecracking snails chewing the greenery and scenery that surrounds them in Turbo, the new effort from DreamWorks animation.
An underdog story with a slime trail all its own, Turbo features Ryan Reynolds as the voice of Theo, a cute little snail who makes his home alongside dozens of other terrestrial mollusks in a suburban garden.
All day long, Theo and his brother Chet (Paul Giamatti) form part of a consumption line, processing the overripe tomatoes as they covet “big red” — the prettiest, juiciest fruit on the vine.
The only real sources of danger are the weekly lawn mowing, the random crow attacks and the daily appearance of Big Wheel Boy, a little kid who goes out of his way to crush snails for sport beneath the hollow plastic wheels of his ride.
So far, Theo and Chet have been able to survive using their tiny brains, but Theo has a hunger for adventure and every night, he slowly makes his way into the garage to watch replays of classic Indy car races on the old TV.
Theo would love to be like Guy Gagne (Bill Hader), the incredible French-Canadian driver who sits at the top of the international rankings, but alas, he’s just a snail. And snails are not known for speed, which makes Theo the butt of every gastropod gag in the garden.
Feeling ostracized and unloved, Theo wanders away from the safety of the suburbs and ends up on the dry concrete floor of the Los Angeles River basin, Hollywood’s favourite locale for a car chase, and Theo’s first taste of gut-rumbling, gas-fuelled adventure.
It’s here, in the symbolic boudoir of Hollywood genre, that Theo is transformed. Sucked into the hood scoop of a supercharged street racer, Theo is bathed in nitrous oxide, pumped through the carburetor and pushed through the combustion chamber of the racy, pimped-out ride.
By the time he’s spat from the exhaust pipe like engine sweat, Theo is no longer an innocent garden snail. He’s Turbo, a man emerging from his shell, fire-hardened by the streets.
With a will to win and blood the colour of windshield fluid, Turbo has the freakish ability to travel at Indy car speeds.
Yet, before Turbo is off to the races at Indianapolis, he’s got to find a sponsor who believes in him — which isn’t all that easy when you’re a snail seeking a race contract. But that’s just what he finds in Tito (Michael Pena), one half Dos Bros Tacos.
The screenplay does an admirable job finding the right path through the prickly bushes of cliché as it exploits everything from our collective exit from the garden of innocence to the streets of experience, as well as our increasing need for speed.
Combined with Reynolds’s likability and comic timing, as well as the supporting cast’s sincerity in each part — Snoop Dogg and Jackson bring real game to the roles — Turbo’s dramatic engine revs high.
The only stall is the decision to cast Bill Hader as the voice of Guy Gagne. Hader is a funny fella, but he clearly has no idea what a real French-Canadian accent sounds like.
Still, this movie is firmly rooted in the organics of biological life and reminds us that every life has meaning, even one that leaves a shimmering slime trail in its wake.