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Turbo Kid

7/31/2017

6 Comments

 

D
​1.07

A post-apocalyptic homage to similar 80's-90's movies.  Or something.

Directed by Francois Simard, Anouk Whissell, and Yoann-Kark Whissell
Starring Munro Chambers, Laurence Leboeuf, and Michael Ironside
Initial Review by Bryan Hartman

Picture
​In a world devastated by acid rain and a nuclear winter, a movie is born to leadoff 80's-90's nostalgia flicks. What I think the makers of Turbo Kid are trying to do is create some 1990s nostalgia with tons of gore to make that good-bad movie. For a while, they were succeeding, I appreciate that Turbo Kid got straight to the point, there wasn't a lot of lolly gagging. Grown men in a bar with their BMX bikes parked out front is funny. When The Kid gives Apple a ride on the pegs of his bicycle, that's classic 90's. I can relate to the bikes, the Viewmaster, and the distractingly bad SNES music. 

But Turbo Kid never does anything. There is no story, there is no apex, and there are no on the edge of your seat action moments. My generation (born circa 1984) seems to love 80s nostalgia movies, maybe they're living vicariously through their older siblings, but I find them mostly lame. And unfortunately Turbo Kid can't survive on nostalgia alone. The gore is absurd and the soundtrack, even while reminding me of playing Super Nintendo, is atrocious.

I glanced at some of the Rotten Tomatoes (89% score) and they talk 80's retro for this movie, but I think it bridges the gap to the 90's as well. Turbo Kid looks retro and is mocking of 80's/90's action movies, so of course condescending critics are going to like it. Chop this movie into a series of it's bike chases and I'm down for 5 minutes of Youtube glory. Otherwise this is bad. C-

6 Comments
Sean
8/1/2017 12:08:11 am

This
Movie sucked. When I saw still images and read the synopsis I thought Scot Pilgrim meets Mad Max. This was Rad meets Mad Max but it was the homemade fan fiction version of Rad and features worse stunt bmx riding than Napoleon Dynamite. D

Reply
Jon
8/6/2017 12:14:14 am

I don't know how many times I have to say I think nostalgia's an idiotic emotion. I don't care about the culture of anyone's childhood, repackaged for modern consumption. Movies long ago figured out that nostalgia's a powerful interest generator. Sometimes, in spite of my distrust, it works, like when the emotion being plumbed is true and earnest (American Graffiti, Stand By Me) instead of product-driven. What doesn't work for me are cultural references with nothing connected to them but the reference itself. That's Turbo Kid, a piece of garbage located in a schlocky past that appeals only to the narrow vision of the directors. I hated this cruel, lazy, pointless, and joyless film. It gave me a physical reaction in the form of a pounding headache, briefly making my life worse for having spent time on it.

Of all the decades to pay homage to, Turbo Kid is immediately screwed by going with the 80's. Starting with the aggressive neon intro and endless studios with their retro logos, Turbo Kid is laying its marker down. It proceeds to hammer it into the ground by having its protagonist pick a Rubik's Cube out of a trash heap and perform a bunch of BMX tricks. If this is the level the film is working at, where the most obvious and hacky references are immediately being made, I can feel any interest and enthusiasm leaving my body. Turbo Kid makes a sop to its level of 80's influence, as ecological disaster froze the culture in the Reagan era, but why does it have to be the goddamn 80's, a pop cultural wasteland that should make everyone collectively look back in shame?

Shame should also be the prime takeaway for the production team. Knock-off Mad Max characters populate the area, a dystopian hand wave that lets actual design geniuses do the heavy lifting. In Turbo Kid, they mimic the spiked shoulder pads but can't even get the rotted-teeth make-up to look right. The water that's supposed to look so bad would've been welcomed in Flint. Is the reference to badly made midnight movies? If so, this isn't made badly enough. For all its hateful nonsense, Turbo Kid is at least made competently, as in everyone's looking in the right direction and there aren't baffling edits. Bad movies made on purpose don't work much on me either, but at least they have a perspective. Turbo Kid takes a half measure, and its inability to pick a path is only that much more infuriating. Of course, it's possible I'm reading too much into it, and everyone involved is just bad at their jobs.

The laziness extends to characterization. Apple is a Manic Pixie Robot Girl, a naive waif with no sense of personal boundaries that only exists to spur the protagonist to action. I was fine with her head being cut off. Michael Ironside, an actor who is not a stranger to saying yes to things he maybe shouldn't, is slumming it to shanty-town, no plumbing proportions. Why wear the mask if you take it off to talk all the time? The protagonist draws because fuck you, of course he draws, he's sensitive. Everyone else is grist for this film's bloodthirsty mill, including the parents who get Mortal Kombat fatalities for their deaths. The dad falls apart into bloody slabs while his traumatized son watches. Huh, huh, cool. The movie is on whoever's side is doing the most violence. Any trouble they go to to make the bartender character memorable is nothing compared to the death they've dreamed up for him, because fuck that guy, this is a vehicle for juvenile sadism.

I hated Turbo Kid. I don't get its reason for existence. The memories that the directors conjured by filming all this are not worth their effort and the effort of dozens of others. It's an ugly endeavor, with no redeeming factors or a single good feeling engendered by it. It's not the worst movie I've ever seen, and that's the only compliment I can pay it. F

Reply
Bryan
8/7/2017 09:20:38 am

Someone didn't ride bikes growing up.

Reply
Drew
8/9/2017 09:03:11 am

I didn't enjoy this. Not exactly good.

Grade: D+

Reply
Cooker
8/14/2017 03:33:46 pm

Did that opening screenshot just say “Epic Pictures, #1 leader in laser disc sales”?

I can appreciate what Turbo Kid was trying to do. It had hints of 80s/90s nostalgia, plenty of comedic gore and an occasional chuckle from bad dialogue, but with a generic apocalyptic non-existent storyline, it was very hard to care about anything that was going on. The character Apple was annoying as hell. And the worst part of all, according to IMDB a sequel is in preproduction stages.

I like how in a Facebook post someone called this a Cook-esque movie. I can definitely see why it was called that, but in this case I can’t say it was so bad that it was good. This one gets a D+

Reply
HikingStick
4/26/2018 01:44:34 pm

Am I the only one who got a weird sense of deja vu when watching this movie? I'm positive I've seen it before--long before 2015. I seem to remember watching it on VHS decades ago? Is it possible that they simply remastered and released at old film? Otherwise, the gal that played Apple is at least 30 when they filmed it.

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