Turbo: Five Things You Need to Know to Get Revved Up

The key deets about the animated snail who is "slo no mo."

By Matt Stevens Jul 21, 2013 2:59 AMTags
Turbo20th Century Fox/Dreamworks

Damn, this es-car-goes! Turbo (voiced by Ryan Reynolds) is an underdog snail whose dreams kick into overdrive when a freak accident gives him the power of super speed. "Slo no mo," the motoring mollusk can blaze through the streets of Los Angeles at up to 200 mph.

By happy chance, Turbo meets Tito (Michael Peña), a taco-stand owner who just happens to enjoy racing snails. (That's better than adding them to taco fillings.) With the help of Tito and a ragtag crew of streetwise snails, Turbo sets out to achieve his ultimate goal—to compete in the Indy 500.

Ready for high-octane action? Rev up with these Turbo deets: 

1. From Green Lantern to Garden Snail: There's a surprising similarity between Green Lantern and DreamWorks' Turbo. Not only does Ryan Reynolds play both titular roles, but the two characters are also imbued with extraordinary powers—superhuman and supersnail. In Lantern, an alien ring gives test pilot Hal Jordan the ability to fly (and a tight green bodysuit), while Turbo's exposure to nitrous oxide bestows him with extreme speed, headlight eyes and other racecar qualities. Hopefully for Reynolds, Turbo will display more super-strength at the box office than weakling Green Lantern.

20th Century Fox/Dreamworks

2. Two Tales of Two Bros: Turbo parallels the sibling struggles between its vertebrate and invertebrate characters. (Did you just have a Biology class flashback?) Chet (Paul Giamatti) is Turbo's older brother and polar opposite. Overly cautious and practical, Chet discourages Turbo's crazy dreams and insists he slog away at the Tomato Plant. Similarly, Tito's older brother and fellow taco-preneur, Angelo (Luis Guzmán), wants Tito to stop racing snails and focus on their business, Dos Bros Tacos.

20th Century Fox/Dreamworks

3. He's Fast. They're Furious. And Very Familiar: Some well-known players fill out the supporting cast. Among the Racing Snails, Samuel L. Jackson does his blaring badass act as Whiplash, Maya Rudolph adds sass as Burn, and Snoop Lion brings—what else?—his "easy to the peasy" delivery to super-cool Smoove Move. Plus, Ken Jeong voices elderly salon lady Kim-Ly. Marking his fifth film in three months (after Pain & Gain, The Hangover Part III, Rapture-Palooza, and Despicable Me 2), Jeong has officially registered on the overexposure meter.

20th Century Fox/Dreamworks

4. A Magnifique Guy: Unlike his costars, Bill Hader is completely unrecognizable as the voice of egomaniacal Guy Gagné, a French-Canadian racecar champ and Turbo's idol. The former SNL funnyman (come back, Stefon!) has mastered a variety of impressions and accents, but he had never attempted a tricky French-Canadian accent. After doing research on YouTube, Hader impressed director David Soren at the initial reading—no mean feat, since Soren himself is Canadian.

20th Century Fox/Dreamworks

5. Capturing the Sights and Size: Turbo vividly depicts disparate sections of Los Angeles—from Turbo's suburban home to the grittier 'hoods of Van Nuys to the L.A. River and even the jam-packed freeways. The 3D road rage is right in your face! For the third-act shift to the Indy 500 (the biggest single-day sporting event in the world), filmmakers used cutting-edge techniques to create huge crowd scenes—some 300,000 people. According to director Soren, Turbo has more crowds than any animated film in history. We have a winner!

PHOTOS: 2013 Summer Movie Guide, action flicks