Turbo

Dreamworks new animated adventure directed by David Soren who also wrote the story with Robert Siegel and Darren Lemke centers on the saying that no dream is too big and no dream is too small. The big being the Indy 500 and the small being a simple garden snail. Land snails are terrestrial pulmonate gastropod molluscs. They are slugs with shells. They leave slime trails and not exactly the kind of fuzzy hero one will find as the new cute fast food kids meal toy.

Theo, aka Turbo (voiced by Ryan Reynolds) likes watching video tapes of the Indy 500 in the garage of the humans' house. He dreams of speed and races along a yardstick breaking his time of 17 minutes from one to 36 inches. His brother Chet (Paul Giamatti) wants him to forget about it and become a more productive snail harvesting and eating the tomatoes in the garden. Forget about the impossible and be disappointed when your big ideas never work. Nip it in the bud now, conform and accept your fate as another working snail in the community. It takes almost being mowed down by the gardener before Theo's dreams comes crashing down. He takes off to the bigger world when he's sucked up by a racing car engine and dosed with some nitrous oxide that transforms his DNA. He finds he's supercharged, lit up like headlights, and able to broadcast radio stations. His brother feeling bad about arguing with Theo comes to find him and the brothers are captured by Tito (Michael Peña) who has snail races with his snail team of Whiplash (Samuel L. Jackson), Ben Schwartz (Skidmark), Michael Bell (White Shadow), Burn (Maya Rudolph) and Smoove Movie (Snoop Dog). When Tito discovers Theo's new powers he tells his brother Angelo (Luis Guzmán) in their taco business (“Dos Bros” that the little snail will make them rich. Angelo like Theo's brother Chet have both been worn down by life and lost their ability to think beyond the box. Tito talks the other vendors in the strip mall (Richard Jenkins, Michelle Rodriguez, Ken Jeong) to kick in the entry fee to the Indy 500 race. Obviously entering a snail in a race is no small thing. But the French Canadian champion Guy Gagne (Bill Hader) is challenged by the attention given to the plucky taco man and his trick snail, so he encourages the race officials to let him compete.

The POV images of the race are really quite good. Kids will love and cheer for the snail as he weaves around cars, tries to deal with is brother, as does Tito with siblings who don't support their efforts. The humans and snails don't exactly communicate with each other, but it works pretty seamlessly as they live out each other expectations. The artwork is bright and colorful, and the characters even the so called “bad guys” will not frighten the little ones. It's hard to make snails cute and lovable, but Turbo and his race crew will make you root for the mollusks.
(Review by reesa)