3 Short Paragraphs: Turbo Kid

2015, François Simard, Anouk Whissell, Yoann-Karl Whissell -- download

The Post-Apocalypse. This is the future, this is 1997. That is how Turbo Kid begins. The movie is  a comedic, ultra-violent take on all those 80s/90s terrible po-ap movies. Everyone is going to attach it to something they experienced as a kid; for me, it says nothing more than Solarbabies, which in itself was a ripoff of Mad Max, full of teens. Turbo Kid himself is a teen wandering the wastelands on his BMX bike (everyone rides Mad Max-d bicycles) collecting junk and selling it for comics. The wasteland is full of perfectly fine refuse, seemingly untouched by years after some sort of apocalypse, and bright with indestructible plastic colours!

This is an indie movie just dying to become a cult classic, even more so than its influencers. From its Star Wars-ian poster to the extremely catchy new80z electronica theme music to irresistibly quotable lines, "This is my GNOME STICK !", the movie marketing just wants to be meme-d and social media shared. I am not sure it was successful as it wanted to be, but it got my attention. And wildly so.

So, like all the plots that have come before, The Kid (nameless!) is dragged into a battle against the evil overlord Zeus (Michael Ironside!) and a masked sidekick (Skeletron). He finds the corpse of his comic book hero (Turbo Rider!) and armed with his hero's pew pew fist blaster, he fights the good fight. The fighting is completely over the top, as the original short required, high on the gore factor but so much fun. Alongside Turbo Kid is Apple, a ditzy blonde with her own secrets. And by ditzy, I don't mean curl her hair on her fingers dumb, I mean forgot to take her meds odd but oh so endearing. And she has a gnome stick. There isn't much more plot than that, and really you don't need it. Now, I wonder if it will be released on cardboard box VHS.