Animation as an art form has allowed the realms of imagination to overflow with what can be given as children’s entertainment. With famous examples from Disney, Pixar and DreamWorks, kids’ entertainment can now be mature and intelligent while still holding onto its fun creative roots. But for every Beauty and the Beast, Inside Out and Kung Fu Panda, there is a Brother Bear, The Good Dinosaur, and (the movie of topic today), Turbo. While Brother Bear and The Good Dinosaur are pretty bad movies that hide most of their positives underneath their negatives, DreamWorks’ 2013 animated feature has practically nothing new, interesting, challenging, or creative within it, leaving a hollow empty film that restricts imagination. Wishing to enter the Indy 500 but held back by ‘’obvious’’ restrictions, a snail named Theo (voiced by Ryan Reynolds) gets tired of his incredibly slow dull life in a garden but things suddenly start speeding up as he is doused in a chemical that gives him aspects of a car, like having headlights for eyes, being able to play music from his mouth, and most importantly, turning him into the fastest snail in the world. Picked up along with his brother Chet (voiced by Paul Giamatti) by a struggling taco truck worker named Tito (voiced by Michael Pena) who discovers the snails fast ability and decides to put him in for running as a racer for the Indy 500, nicknaming him Turbo. Heading to the race along with a bunch of other racer snails, Turbo is set to race against his once idol of racing Guy Gagne (voiced by Bill Hader) and see if he can survive his dream of being a real racer in a real race. Even ignoring the fact that the concept for this film is unbelievably ridiculous and strange, the movie is so devoid anything new or unique that its easily the blandest DreamWorks movie ever made.

There are so many animated movies that pushed the normal formula away from kids entertainment and branched out into unbelievable new levels. DreamWorks, along with Disney and Pixar, was one of the main animation companies that started this trend on a recognisable level, releasing movies that weren’t always amazing at first but would later delve into amazing films like the Kung Fu Panda and How to Train Your Dragon series. When this is one of your follow-up films, you can notice a massive drop in care for what you’re releasing, something that is so safe, bland and made of nothing but old clichés that people don’t even need to watch the film to know exactly how it’s going to go. Outside of the randomly stupid concept of a snail becoming a hybrid car, its every underdog rookie sports story from several other movies, along with its stock quotes, characters, and scenarios. Since nothing is shocking and the film cares so little about making its characters interesting or relatable, the film jumps around from place to place and focus to focus so jerkily that it leaves the film with a shaky pacing thats annoying to sit through. Every scene is either a stupid cliché, a pointless scene or a scene that turns the film in a new direction, never feeling flowing or direct in its approach. The only thing of worth from this film is when it actually gets to the race at the end. While still being every climatic race showdown of these kinds of films, the smaller perspective allows for some funs angles and the actual conclusion of the race is not as standard as these would normally go, but rather in the actions instead of the eventual results.

With a narrative this predictable and lame, it only makes sense that the characters involved are equally as forgettable and useless. The idea of a snail being incredibly fast is something that could maybe work as a cute short or as a sidekick in another film, but when he’s given the main focus, there’s nothing else that can be tapped into with this idea, leading to an obviously  formulaic narrative. Because of this, Turbo is not a good character; he’s every dreamer character that wants to be big but doesn’t have the luck until he is thrown into the situation and Ryan Reynolds doesn’t leave any impression through his performance. Paul Giamatti is trying so hard in this movie as the main character’s brother, managing to give probably the only good performance of the whole film, but there’s nothing he could do to save a film with a race car snail as the focus. The rest of the side actors are just dated celebrities that feel squeezed in to appeal to a demographic instead of for their acting capabilities, with most of them usually being suited for off-shot comedies, with people like Snoop Dogg, Maya Rudolph, Ken Jeong, etc. Even more popular actors like Michael Pena and Samuel L Jackson feel incredibly wasted and forgettable in this flick with how poorly their characters are handled. A majority of the side characters impact very little to the overall film and only serve to pad the cast out with other people because this kind of film usually has a big cast, but with their lack of personality and bland/uncomfortable designs, they aren’t going to be a likeable memory for anyone.

For a movie that came out in 2013, it is a pretty ugly looking picture. While the animation could be a lot worst, its filled with a lot of bland and awkward looking characters, a lack of any real strong expressions, and a serious lack of colorful environments. The snails (surprisingly) do not offer up much expression due to the only feature of notice being their non-moving shells and their detached eyes. The humans looks really lazy and have a lot of uncomfortable expressions and designs, they are never pleasant to look at either being ugly or unimpressive. Even with all the snails and their different colors, there is a distinct lack of color through a majority of the film with a lot of the environments being very grey, blue, and black, leaving the film looking really dull and unwelcoming. The streams of blue light that is left by Turbo when he speeds gives a good indication of where he is from a distance and lives a nice visual on an otherwise dull film. The angles when seen from the main character’s perspective give some of the traditional set-ups at least a unique visual angle and allows the final race to feature some fun shots. Every line spoken in this film is either a cliché or an incredibly unfunny forgettable phrase; nothing from the writing stands out in the slightest. The music choices only help to make the movie even more dated than it already was with the choice of concept and voice cast connected, with nothing pop and rap songs that get real annoying real quick.

The movie that makes Disney’s Cars and Planes look fresh and different, Turbo is about as basic and lazy an animated feature as you can get. From the company that even in their worst movies were so crazily bad that they’re memorable, this barely feels like it came from a big animation company, being so simplistic, dated, and run-of-the-mile, it could have been made by anyone and nobody would notice the difference, this film using none of DreamWorks strengths in the picture. With an incredibly lazy story, forgettable characters, odd voice cast, awkward animation, bland color scheme and useless writing, outside of the climax which is predictable and generic, but at least a bit more engaging than the rest of the film, this is an animated movie that brings nothing new to the table. While animation can continue to grow and continue to make marvellous films that hit into legendary status, Turbo will still be holding up the rear far in the back.