Turbo

As we enter the mid-summer movie season, we have yet another animated film in the offing. When I first saw the first trailer of Dreamworks Animation's "Turbo", I personally wasn't impressed until I finally traveled to the cineplex to view and was pleasantly surprised.

All his life, Theo (Ryan Reynolds) the garden snail has lived a slow lane life with dreams of wanting to be fast. Suddenly, a freak mishap involving nitrous oxide give him the ability to move at superspeed, which puts Theo and his brother, Chet (Paul Giamatti) at a failing strip mall. They are discovered by Tito (Michael Pena), a goofy and good-natured fast food worker, and his crew of racing snails including Smoove Move (Snoop Dogg), Burn (Maya Rudolph), Skidmark (Ben Schwartz), White Shadow (Michael Patrick Bell), and lead by Whiplash (Samuel L. Jackson), and a wild idea is born for Theo to race with his heroes in the Indy 500. Now, this gang of misfits are traveling to Indianapolis to dare pursue the impossible dream, which will require all of Theo's speed as Turbo to have any shot of achieving.

Others to round out the cast are Luis Guzman as Angelo, Tito's brother, Bill Hader as Guy Gagne, a race car driver, Richard Jenkins as Bobby, Ken Jeong as Kim Ly, Michelle Rodriguez as Paz, Mario Andretti as Dos Bros. customer/Race official, and Aidan Andrews as Bike Boy.

Considering this is David Soren's first outing as a feature film director, he did an incredible job. His pacing and pathos he was able to emit through these characters was amazing. If this is his first, I can't wait to see what he can do in the future. It was written by Darren Lemke, Robert D. Siegel, and Soren, which is based on a story by Soren. The story was interesting, entertaining, well scripted, with an amazing message about the concept of being able to dream. Coupled with Dreamworks amazing animation and the 3D process, and you have a fun ride.

This film keeps you moving from minute one to the end credits in one exciting, entertaining story about one snail that simply dared to dream and his determination to see it come to fruition. And isn't that something we all strive, or want to strive to do?

Out of 4 Stars: 4                          Rated: PG                       96mins.