Turbo may be no Prince of Egypt, How to Train Your Dragon or Shrek in Dreamworks' resume, and Despicable Me 2, Monsters University, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Part 2 and The Croods(marginally) were better animated films from this year. Turbo is better than Bee Movie, Shark Tale and Shrek the Third though, and from the animated films this year it's infinitely better than Sir Billi, My Little Pony Equestria Girls, Justin and the Knights of Valour, Planes and Escape from Planet Earth. Turbo is not without flaws, the film does start a little slowly, it is a little too predictable and the character of Guy Gagne is uninteresting and stereotypical. The animation is wonderful though, the colours are thrillingly eye-popping and there is so much visual detail. The 3D is excellent as well. Other selling points are the catchy and energy-filled soundtrack and a sharp, smart script that is full of funny one-liners. The story has its predictability, but it does have heart and its charm and you can hardly say it goes at a snail's pace. If anything the pacing is of the fast and furious kind, this couldn't be more apparent in the final half-hour with the exciting final race. But the final race isn't the only race sequence, all of them are immensely fun to watch(feel-of-the-wheel quality described in one review, RadioTimes I think, is apt) and some of the best racing sequences of any animated film since Cars. The characters are genuinely fine, especially Turbo and Tito, while the voice work especially from Ryan Reynolds, Michael Pena, Paul Giamatti and Samuel L. Jackson is top notch. In conclusion, worth the look and a good animated film, better than some have made out to be. 7.5/10 Bethany Cox

Theo (Ryan Reynolds) is a snail who dreams of going fast. Then one night, he gets sucked into the engine of a drag racer. He ingests some nitrous and gains the superpowers of a car. When his brother Chet (Paul Giamatti) gets taken by crows, he goes to rescue him. Tito the tacos guy captures the brothers and puts them into a snail racing circuit. Theo blows the rest of the snails away and takes on the name Turbo. Tito scrounges up $20k and enters Turbo into the Indy 500.

The colors are bright, it's loud, the snails look fun, and the concept is cute. The kids will like this. They even put in an auto tune viral video. The racing snails gang has some fun voice work. The movie drags in a few spots. The human characters aren't quite as much fun. Whenever the snail gang gets on the screen, there is bound to be a few laughs. This is certainly flashy enough for the kids.

I wouldn't say "Turbo" is among my very favorite animation films (from 2013, Epic is easily my favorite still),but it's impressive how the genre is on such a high right now that even the lesser popular films like this one still guarantee a really entertaining time at the cinema. "Turbo" centers on a little snail that constantly dreams of becoming a race driver and win the Indy 500 one day. One day, he gets into an accident and from that moment on can not only listen to the current radio coverage, but reaches velocities that make Speedy Gonzalez look like the snail. The very first sequence with the animators visually tricking us into believing Turbo already wins the race was a pretty good introduction to the film and character. Seriously, I don't think you could transform the "lame snail into speed rush"-metaphor any better than this was handled here. The "motor house" was a nice component too.

The film feels very thought-through down to the smallest details. The protagonist is pretty much the only orange snail, which clearly helps in identifying him in scenes with dozens of snails in all shapes and colors depicted and I also liked the parallel between the two snail brothers and the taco selling brothers. On a side note, animated tacos have never looked better. I really wanted one too. Nonetheless I have to say that the moment they entered the picture the film got slightly worse till the final race sequences. None of the supporting characters were really memorable here, especially the other turbo snakes which I personally found the weakest point of the film. Turbo's interactions with his people and the race at the end were much more interesting than the chase sequence of who gets there first for example. Same can be said about the other vendors near the taco store. Kinda insignificant and they weren't particularly funny either, like when the grandma attacked the famous driver champion towards the end. The movie applies some of the successful plot points from earlier animated films, the relationship between the title character and Guy-Gagné reminded me a bit of the one between Fredricksen and Muntz from "Up", with a previous idol becoming the main villain who even goes after the hero's life at one point. The little boy who loved cracking snails reminded me a bit of the evil kid from Toy Story, although his character wasn't by far as major as the toy torturer.

"Turbo" is a decent overall effort from David Soren and after directing two Madagascar short films, including the pretty funny Christmas special, he has proved that he is also a capable choice for the big screen. It runs for slightly over 90 minutes and comes from the writers behind "Shrek Forever After" and "The Wrestler" (that's right!). It's primarily aimed at younger audiences, but most of the grown-ups (including myself) had a pretty good time watching it as well. Occasionally, there were sequences of birds randomly catching snails for food, but it's neither particularly graphic nor bad to an extent that it could harm children. It's just evolution in the world of animals. It's 90 entertaining minutes that feature some good music occasionally too. The way they used Tom Jones' "What's New Pussycat" and Queen's "We Are The Champions" was good, the scene with Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger" was even pretty great and a feast for eyes and ears. The ending was delightful and conveyed a nice message of how we don't need superpowers, at least not on the final meters, to make our seemingly impossible dreams come true. A film worth watching and I'm curious about Soren's next projects.