Theater Review: Turbo

I am so far behind on my reviews again. I had to at least sit down and get this theater review out - especially since the film is dropping on DVD next week.

Anyway, I definitely was not expecting anything when I went to see Turbo. My parents came up to visit and took my son to see it - and I tagged along.

But, I really came away surprised - I really enjoyed it.

Turbo (Ryan Reynolds) is a snail that has the need for speed. He stays up at night watching videos of his favorite race car driver, Guy Gagne (Bill Hader) and dreaming of being a racer himself. For a snail, he might actually be one of the faster ones - but he is still a snail.

During the day, he works in a tomato garden with a lot of other snails, including his brother Chet (Paul Giamatti), who is sort of in charge of the garden crew. On his breaks, instead of eating, Turbo pretends to be fast - and it is beginning to wear on his brother, who wants him to grow up.

Turbo leaves the tomato garden for a walk one night and wishes on a 'star' to be fast, and he gets sucked up into a super charged car - and he gets soaked in nitrous oxide that gets sucked into his DNA. And, you guessed it - Turbo becomes super fast.

So, he goes to show off for the garden crew - and manages to crush most of the garden, which gets himself and his brother fired. As they fought, Chet is scooped up by a crow - and Turbo heads off to rescue him.

Both of them are soon picked up by Tito (Michael Pena) and taken back to a forgotten strip mall where he works with his brother Angelo (Luis Guzman) at a taco stand. Tito likes to race snails, and uses some souped up shells to make the snails faster - however, everyone is blown away but what Turbo can do.

Tito soon comes up with an idea to rescue the taco stand - and the strip mall. He decides to enter Turbo in a race with actual race cars - including racing against his ideal Gagne.

As I said, I went into this not really expecting much - but I found myself pretty entertained. No, it isn't the greatest animated film, heck it probably isn't even the best of the year. But, I was definitely entertained throughout, so it gets my vote of approval.

The interaction between the brothers, both Tito and Angelo, and Chet and Turbo is pretty good. The strip mall crew: Paz (Michelle Rodriguez), Bobby (Richard Jenkins) and Kim-Ly (Ken Jeong) were also pretty fun to watch. Then there were the other snails that get raced: Whiplash (Samuel L. Jackson), Burn (Maya Rudolph), Smoove Move (Snoop Dogg), Skidmark (Ben Schwartz) and White Shadow (Michael Bell) - a lot of laughs during their scenes.

Again, not breaking new ground here with this film - but for a film that I really didn't even think about seeing, I really enjoyed it.

Grade:

The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard

Let me first start off by saying that this film should have been WAY better than it turned out being.

For starters, they roped in a ton of great comedic actors and oddball types from television and film. And, for the most part, most of the ideas in the film are pretty good - they just didn't seem to follow through with the funny, which was disappointing.

The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard is about a group of sniper salesman (my term) who are hired to come into an auto dealership and basically sell the place out. This is what they specialize in. The leader of the group is Entourage's Jeremy Piven, who plays Don Ready. In Ready's entourage are Jibby Newsome (Ving Rhames), Brent Gage (David Koechner) and Babs Merrick (Kathryn Hahn).

Ready is brought in by Ben Selleck (James Brolin), owner of the auto dealership over the Fourth of July weekend to sell each and every car on his lot. If Selleck is unable to sell these cars a rival salesman, Stu Harding (Alan Thicke) and his son, Paxton (Ed Helms) will take over the dealership. Another tossout, Helms' character just happens to be engaged to Selleck's daughter, Ivy (Jordana Spiro).

Like I said, a pretty bankable cast already with the funny and I haven't even mentioned that Tony Hale and Ken Jeong are part of Selleck's sales team. Or that Craig Robinson is brought in as the events disc jockey.

The premise seems great and a lot of the small things going on in the film can be funny, like Helms aspiration to become a hit boyband group, but while in his 30s. Or that Babs is really trying to score with Ivy's brother, Peter (Rob Riggle) despite the fact that he is a 10-year old with a pituitary issue.

Overall, I laughed a few times, but I have to admit I was hoping for more with the cast that was assembled. Sure, there were no A-list quality comedians in the bunch, but with the amount of second banana characters in the group it still could have been much more than it was.

Grade:

TV Meme: Day 19 - Best TV Show Cast

Wow. I have been back and forth on this one for a little while now. In the end I think I decided to go with the one that I did because the show is still on and is still just getting started, but already there is so much chemistry between the characters.

At first, my gut instinct had me selecting Scrubs as the best television cast. I mean, for eight seasons they delivered the laughs and the relationships between each and every character just seemed so genuine. That is something so hard to do. But, the cast was actually very close friends off of the set, and it clearly showed on the show.

That being said, I have (and will) be using Scrubs in a great many posts for this meme. Which is pretty obvious seeing as how it is my favorite show. So, I decided to select the show that is, I guess, currently becoming my favorite show - Community.


I seriously hope this show doesn't have a sophomore slump because I am really speaking so highly of it, but only after one season.

As I have said in previous posts the cast shakes down like this. Joel McHale stars as Jeff Winger, a lawyer who gets found out for having a fake degree and must return to community college to get his old life back. Gillian Jacobs is Britta Perry, a love interest for Jeff who is also a large feminist and activist - she has also been called the downer of he group. Danny Pudi plays Abed Nadir, a film student who converses through his knowledge of movies, mostly from the 80's. Donald Glover is Troy Barnes, a former star quarterback who loses his scholarship when he gets hurt tossing a keg. Alison Brie stars as Annie Edison, a brilliant girl who blossomed late in life, or after she overdosed on drugs and had to leave high school. Chevy Chase plays Pierce Hawthorne, the inventor of Hawthorne wipes. Finally, Yvette Nicole Brown plays Shirley Bennett, a mother of two who is freshly divorced and heads to college for the first time.

Also on the show in a smaller role are Jim Rash as Dean Pelton and Ken Jeong as Senor Chang - with John Oliver as Professor Ian Duncan also lending a hand in a handful of episodes.

It's truly amazing just how quickly the cast gelled together. The best scenes, much like Friends at Central Perk, are when the cast is alone in the study room. Without even saying words, but gestures at the table and sly looks they can have you rolling on the floor. But, the dialogue is just as great as the gestures - and the characters have blossomed there as well. Each character has found their niche and they slide together perfectly.

The best character interactions come between Troy and Abed. They have truly developed amazing chemistry together - they remind me a lot of J.D. and Turk (except neither of them is truly the star of the show). I have embedded their Spanish rap below - check it out. If you do watch the show, make sure to stick around for the credits - they usually do something off the wall crazy like this.



I urge you if you have not checked out this show yet and you like comedies (especially a show like Scrubs) then check this one out. Don't just watch a single episode because it might not show you everything you need to see - watch a few and you won't regret it.

TV Meme: Day 3 - Favorite New Show From This Past Season

Unlike years past this was a pretty slow year for me in selecting new television programs to watch. I was just starting grad school when the Fall season got underway and I had been under extreme pressure from Mrs. Kano to drop some of the many shows I was already watching - so as shows were canceled and completed I didn't really jump on to too many new shows from this past season.

And, when things were coming together for this upcoming season I wasn't really too thrilled with many of the previews. The lone show that grasped my interest was FlashForward as Lost was ending and I was hoping to fill my nerd-void (that apparently didn't work). I was also somewhat interested in The Middle, which was a new comedy on ABC thanks to the inclusion of Neil Flynn (or the Janitor in Scrubs). That being said, I was also interested in Cougar Town the new brain child of Scrubs helmer Bill Lawrence.

Although I enjoyed all three of the above shows - and two of them actually will return for a second season (adios FlashForward) it was a show that I really had no intentions of watching that gets my pick for favorite new show of the season. And despite my search for another Lost this show just may help me as I grieve the loss of Scrubs.

My favorite new show from this past season is none other than: Community. And, like I said above, I had no real intent to even watch this show except for the fact that I was allowed to watch the very first episode wicked early on Facebook - which actually peeked my interest.

I was unsure if the premise of the show could actually work, but so far it has and it has surpassed my level of expectations and then some.

Jeff Winger (Joel McHale) is a lawyer who gets caught with a phony law degree. So, in order to get back to his cozy lifestyle and his former job, he is forced to enroll at a local community college and get an actual degree.

In the pilot he does his best to talk his way out of actually attending class or paying attention in an attempt to basically just get his degree handed to him - but that fails.

He meets a pretty girl in the cafeteria, Britta Perry (Gillian Jacobs) who is struggling with Spanish and, in an attempt to get in her pants, pretends to be a Spanish tutor and invites her to study with him. She accepts, but little does he know that she invites a handful of other students from her Spanish class to the study session - and this is the birth of an extremely funny comedy.


The rest of the cast rounds out amazingly, Pierce Hawthorne (Chevy Chase) is the old man of the group. In the past Chase has sort of become annoying, but he really hits it on all levels as a supporting character. Abed Nadir (Danny Pudi) is a film loving student that Jeff believes possibly has Aspergers. Abed compares everything that happens to a movie and has movie quotes that fit every situation. Troy Barnes (Donald Glover) is a former football star who misses out on a scholarship. Troy wasn't one of my favorite characters at the start of the show, but he has truly progressed into a great character and has some great one-liners. His relationship with Abed is one of the best in television. Annie Edison (Alison Brie) is a goodie-goodie brainiac who is only in community college because she became addicted to pills in high school. She is the young girl of the group and tries to keep everyone on task. Finally, Shirley Bennett (Yvette Nicole Brown) is the mother of two boys that recently divorced her husband. She is very religious and sometimes tosses her two-cents around.

One other character missing above is Senor Chang (Ken Jeong) who is the groups Spanish teacher and gets involved in a lot of their extra-curricular activities somehow. He is extremely over the top and hilarious in almost all of his scenes.

As I said, I was not looking for this show but it somehow found me and I couldn't be happier. Sure, it had some growing pains in its first season, but for the most part it was downright amazing and hilarious. I haven't laughed this hard during a show since - dare I say it - Scrubs.

And just because I think she is so cute - here is a picture of Alison Brie: