Go-Go-Godzilla #25: Godzilla vs Megaguirus

Director: Masaaki Tezuka
Year: 2000
Length: 105 minutes

The Gist:
The G-Graspers division of the Japan Self-Defence Force (or whatever acronymic organization is now in charge of defending the country in this film) plans on using a plasma energy device to develop a miniature black hole - fired from a satellite in space, the Dimension Tide - to swallow Godzilla and end his threat forever. There's no way this can go wrong, ridght?  

Oops, after testing they've left a tear in the spacetime continuum. A creature has come through, left an egg behind, then disappeared back into the tear. A young boy finds the shining silver egg and hides it away. His family moves to Tokyo where the egg has cracked open in the move. He disposes of the egg down a sewer and that's that. All good, right? Nothing to worry about.

Oops. The egg enters mitosis and starts rapidly growing. Soon there's a giant bug creature on the loose feeding on unsuspecting humans in surprisingly grizzly scenes, changing after each feeding. It's not long before it attracts the attention of Godzilla, and their  (off-screen) conflict attracts the attention of the G-Graspers who take off Thunderbirds/Gatchaman-style in the advanced fighter jet Griffon. They're too late to witness the battle, but they find a bug carcass and manage to plant a tracker on Godzilla

Turns out, there's not just one bug, but a whole swarm of them, and their's rapid underwater growth in the city's water tables is causing extensive flooding resulting in an evacuation of parts of Tokyo. The swarm of thousands of Meganulas fly to Godzilla and start attacking, sensing Godzilla is an energy source.  Godzilla heats up his own body before blasting as many of them out of the sky as possible but, before he can finish them off, the Dimension Tide is fired and Godzilla is zapped into a black hole... and that's that. Movie done.

But no! Godzilla saw it coming and buried himself in the dirt and survives.  Big G stares down the Griffon team, as if to say "nice try assholes".

The Meganulas swarm flees back to Tokyo, where a mege-mega egg lay in wait. The Meganulas feed the egg the energy they received from Godzilla and die, but a new titan is born, the Megaguirus, like the queen of the Meganulas, sort of like a killer bees species...territorial and aggressive. 

Godzilla and Megaguirus fight while the G-Graspers try to tee them both up to get blasted by the Dimension Tide. Unfortunately Megaguirus' high frequency attacks disrupt both the sattelite and the Griffon and the humans are out of the fight. 

But when it's revealed that there's actually a Plasma energy prototype being developed in Tokyo it makes sense why Godzilla was coming back again. And so, with systems rebooted, the humans take one last stab at firing the Dimension Tide. All seems successful, but weeks later, a seismic reading leaves the possibility that Godzilla somehow escaped his fate....

Godzilla, Friend or Foe:
I mean, the humans of the film are only about getting rid of him...but he's the one that needs to take care of this human-generated Megaguirus problem. So...yes.

Anyone Worth Caring About?
I get fooled every time. The opening sequence focuses on female ranger Kiriko Tsujimori, who loses her leader when he saves her from falling debris from a Godzilla-ravaged building. She's later the leader of the G-Graspers...
She recruits miniaturist and microwave expert Hajime to help with their project, and he's pretty sweet on her from the get-go. But she's so Godzilla-foused, she just rolls her eyes at his flirtations. She's got a pretty steely determination.  She also gets to punch a greedy bureaucrat in the face so that's fun. And in the end, with Hajime the guy in the chair, and Kiriko flying the Griffon, they fulfill her objective of ending the threat of Godzilla, and they continue flirting.
I like them both.

The Samesies:
Oh, the Megaguirus is a flying kaiju. Great. Because Toho's had such a great track record with flying kaiju.
This one at least gets flapping wings and GCI effects to help dramatize the effect of its power, but it still looks pretty bad (and boy are the strings ever so obvious).  Like every flying Kaiju it creates sonic booms when it flies that destroy things in its wake, it can create massive wind gusts when it flaps its wings.

Evacuations and mass panic sequence (but with a bit of comedy) as Godzilla heads for Tokyo. Reuse of the original Godzilla theme as he emerges into the bay.

It's been established numerous times over in the Godzilla films that big G will go wherever the opposing threat is, but here the G-Graspers don't seem to understand why he's heading for Tokyo. They don't even consider that it's to face off against Megaguirus.

The Differences:
This film starts as a pseudo-sequel to the original, except with a new alt history where Japan has banned all use of nuclear energy, relocated it center to Osaka, and is entirely focused on developing clean energy. They develop Plasma energy in 1996, but even that is enough of a draw to attract the creature, so that has to be ceased. There is a montage of scenes recreated from the original Gojira with this current Godzilla, in black and white even, with a voice over (the first in Godzilla films).

The opening battle against an rampaging Godzilla is handled by foot soldiers with bazookas, which was pretty exciting (there's something about seeing people against Godzilla rather than the usual 5 minute montage of tanks assembling and firing... hey, both bazookas and tanks are equally in effective, but at least we get some human reaction out of this one). Some of the miniature work in these scenes is really clunky, and unintentionally funny.

While we've had the three different Super X model hover tanks of the Heisei era, and the astro-soldiers of Destroy All Monsters and Invasion of the Astro-Monster in the Showa era, but this one really goes for the kitted-out anime-style action hero force with the G-Graspers.

I can't believe this is the first time we've ever seen anyone climb onto Godzilla. I doubly can't believe he would even notice, but he does. Sensitive creature.

We've only gotten a few underwater scenes before in Godzilla, but there's some submersible images - some CGI, some miniatures, some practical - that mostly pretty fun.

In Godzilla 2000, like in many of these films there's often a character who is all about killing Godzilla, and then there's the counterpoint (typically lead) character who is about studying and protecting Godzilla. In this case our lead character, Major Kiriko Tsujimori is the one hell-bent on Godzilla's destruction, even at one point authorizing use of the black hole gun before it is ready or they know what the side effects will be. Dangerous.

It's got a big, sweeping, pounding, somewhat 90's superhero/action film-inspired score from Michiru Oshimawhich I really, really liked.

It also has a post-credits scene (another first for a Godzilla), where the little boy from earlier is at school when it seems Godzilla emerges again.

The Message:
When you're afraid of something, you don't run. It's a stand-out line Kiriko says her mentor taught her, but you know...it's never really applied to the story at all.

Rating (out of 5 Zs):  ZZZ
There's a good progression throughout all of this. Everything sort of tracks and moves from A-to-B-to-C-to-D. There's no wild swings or randomness.

I enjoyed a lot of this, but it's unfortunate how really bad CGI (which almost all of the Meganulas scenes are terrible late-90's era quality CGI effects) can put a damper on it.  The fight between Godzilla and Megaguirus is very dynamic, the most dynamic Godzilla fight yet. However, it's often framed poorly and its CGI fails to benefit it, so it's far from perfect. But it's still pretty entertaining.  I hear there some incredible Millennium Era films still to come so I really, really look forward to those based on this.

Sleepytime Factor:
Surprisingly, no sleepiness. I was really entertained by this one.

Go-Go-Godzilla: #9 Son of Godzilla

Japanese Name: Kaijū-tō no Kessen: Gojira no Musuko [Monster Island's Decisive Battle: Godzilla's Son]
Director: Jun Fukuda
Studio: Toho
Year: 1967
Length: 1h26

The Creature's' Story:

Stupid bugs make Godzilla's baby born premature. Godzilla fight bugs. Godzilla kick rocks at bugs. Godzila burn bugs. Godzilla save Godzilla's ugly baby from stupid bugs. But now Godzilla got to care for stupid Godzilla baby? No thanks. Godzilla leave ugly baby to be ugly by baby's self.  Oh, Godzilla can't be bad dad. Godzilla's dad bad dad, abandon Godzilla. Cat in cradle and silver spoon. Godzilla give ugly baby tail ride like good, fun dad.

Fun dad tired. Ugly baby amuse self while fun dad sleep. Ugly baby learn agility or something.

Godzilla awaken to find ugly baby gone? Where ugly baby go? Godzilla find ugly baby playing with stupid humans. Ugly baby must learn stupid humans are stupid. Godzilla drag ugly baby away from stupid humans by tail, like good, fun dad. Different tail ride.

Good dad teach ugly baby how to spit fire. Ugly baby only blow smoke rings. Ugly baby ugly and stupid. Oh, step on ugly baby's tail and ugly baby spit good fire. Good ugly baby. Godzilla good mommdaddy. Godzilla sleep now.

Godzilla awake. Where stupid ugly baby now? Sigh, stupid ugly baby messing around with stupid bugs. Blast bugs, send them flying. What this now? Stupid spider has wrapped up stupid ugly baby in silk. Godzilla remember what this like when Mothra do that. So annoying. Stupid baby learn.  But Godzilla good dad and rescue ugly baby and kill spider dead. No! Stupid spider play dead and spit in Godzilla eye. Godzilla and ugly baby roast spider together. Fun dad back!

Why so cold? Godzilla and baby go sleep now.

The Human Story:
It took me until Ebirah to realize that Toho likes to use the same players over and over in its Godzilla films. The confusing part is they tend to play different characters. Most of the players here are repeat visitors in new roles.

Goro Maki, freelance reporter, airdrops into Sherbet Station, a research facility on Soelgel Island. He's not greeted with the warmest of welcomes, but the alternative to tossing him into the ocean is getting his help...with cooking and cleaning. The station, Goro learns, has a giant mantis stalking the perimeter. Goro also learns the station is building a Weather Dominator (a G.I. Joe term, not a Godzilla one) to control the weather in order to make lands more cultivatable to produce more food for humanity's growing population. But in the wrong hands, it could freeze the planet.

A test of the Weather Dominator goes horribly awry as the radiation trigger doesn't fire, receiving interference from the center of the island.  It sets the island's temperature up past 45 degrees (Celcius) roasting the men of the station, but they manage, especially as the heat does eventually start to drop.

Goro finds a girl, Saeko, the daughter of an archaeologist, who has been living alone on the island for many years since her father died.  Saeko is kind of awesome but also part of the "born sexy yesterday" trope.  Goro also finds a hive of mantis (Kamacuras) who unearth an egg. The Kamacuras crack the egg open and a baby Godzilla is inside. It's real ugly and so helpless. The Kamacuras propose to eat the baby Godzilla (literal lip-smacking from those bugs) but daddymama Godzilla hears its cries and is on the rampage. It wrecks the station.

Godzilla saves his baby, but immediately abandons it. Saeko feeds it until Godzilla has a change of heart and returns, giving the baby a ride on his tail.  Later, Saeko and Goro are out on a "friends date" and they spy baby G, and Saeko believes they're friends, like the Grizzly Man once did with the bears. 

A fever runs through the camp but Saeko knows the cure, but they have to get around Kumonga, a giant spider and go down to the red water where Godzilla sleeps.  It all goes off smoothly and is quite anticlimactic. The men are saved, but after a few days in the cave, the Professor finally concedes defeat on his experiment to Weather Dominate and solve world hunger.

Saeko, gathering food, awakes a Kamacuras, but baby G is there to save the day, except he's blowing smoke rings again. The fight doesn't go well for baby G, and then Kumonga awakens. But so does papa G.  Baby G gets sprayed with silk, an annoying family tradition. The cave is starting to collapse and the Professor says their only hope to get out alive is to Weather Dominate the island and freeze the monsters. Which they do. Hooray?  

The ending with Godzilla and Minilla cuddling up in the snow reminds me of the Sesame Street Christmas Eve special where Big Bird damn near freezes to death on the roof waiting for santa.

Godzilla, Friend or Foe:
Whatever

The Sounds:
Has a theme that sounds like a 60's sitcom, and a lot of 60's swinging, groovy repetitive rhythms and staccato horns.

The Kamacuras make a squelching noise like  a cross between the whistle of a boiling kettle and a baby eagle. When it walks around it makes hissing noises that sounds like blowing up a balloon.

Kumonga makes a "pew pew" sound, but it's less like a laser gun and more like compressed air.

Baby G makes vaguely baby-esque noises that sounds like a doll with a pull-string from the 60's. Only vaguely recognizeable as baby sounds. Like the doll found at the end of Planet of the Apes.

The Message:
Bugs suck. Babies are ugly, but you love them in spite of that I guess. Also, Weather Dominating is hard.

Rating (out of 5 Zs):
Z - this really quite sucks. It's ugly and sloppy (at least once the camera catches a glimpse of outside of the miniature landscape's matte painting backdrop), boring and ruins the mystique of Godzilla even more than Godzilla dancing, or batting rocks around with Rodan. Baby Godzilla ain't no Baby Yoda.  

Director Set: Select Selick

Perhaps my favourite podcast over the past few years is Blank Check with Griffin and David, which finds actor Griffin Newman (The Tick) and critic David Sims (The Atlantic) covering the entire filmography of a director (one film per episode) specifically those who were given a blank check at some point in their career to make whatever passion project they want.  It's an entertaining, inviting, insightful, thoughtful and incredibly well researched podcast which goes into deep (and sometimes juvenile) conversations about the director and actors and productions of the films they cover, frequently to the point where the podcast episodes are longer than the films. They just ended their review of the films of Henry Selick.

For those who don't know, Selick is the director of The Nightmare Before Christmas.  I should clarify, if there's any confusion, he is the director of "Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas".  So heavy is the Burton influence, and imposition of his name over the title that it's a film easily mistaken as a Burton film.

It's true that the film owes so much to its association with Burton, it's really Selick's direction, his sense of style, and his innovations in the world of filming stop motion animation, that make it stand out so boldy.  The things we ascribe almost exclusively with Burton - the morbid humour, the gothic sensibilities, the fascination with the ugly, gross, freakish and abnormal, the just plain weird -- those are traits that Selick shares with Burton, and maybe perhaps trumps Burton in his fascination with them.

In all of Selick's films (well, I can't speak to the live-action/animation debacle of Monkeybone, which I didn't watch) there is an underworld, or at least an alternate world, for the protagonists to venture through.  They seem perhaps a darker place of existence that may at first appear to be something brighter because of their sheer difference.  In Nightmare, there are many alternate worlds operating outside of the "real world", and through Jack Skellington, we inhabit probably the darkest of them all (and yet it's still full of joy and glee).  In James and the Giant Peach, James goes from a live action world to an animated one, where he befriends clothed bugs as they travel across the Atlantic in a gigantic piece of fruit. In Coraline there's the other realm, one that mirrors Coraline's own familiar, tiny world, only where everything is just as she (thinks she) wants it - happier, more attentive parents, more fun/less annoying neighbours, joys and delights meant for her.  In Wendell and Wild, the titular demon brothers live in an underworld realm that's largely inhabited by their father, a giant with an amusement park built on his belly.

In each of Selick's four stop-motion animated films, there is a character longing for a different reality, a different existence and then it finds its way to them.  In Nightmare, Jack wants something more than what he has, more than scares and frights, he wants joys and delights, even though they are sometimes two sides of the same coin so he takes the joyous of them all as if he is entitled to it.  In James..., James' orphaned existence with his sadistic aunts is even a few notches below that of Harry Potter on the misery index. Coraline in Coraline is lonely, sad and angry, and her parents can't bother to even look at her when she's talking to them...so when another realm presents itself, even with creepier undertones presenting, she's eager to be there.  In Wendell & Wild, we have two demons who are subjugated by their father, and long to be above ground, and they're willing to manipulate a traumatized 13-year-old longing for her own escape to get it.

Each stop-motion picture finds Selick dealing with a particular challenge.  For Nightmare, he's making a full-blown musical, and it really pushed the envelope in terms of complex camera work to get a really sweeping cinematic feel.  With James... Selick has an extended, 20-minute, live-action set piece that has real-life James (Paul Terry), experiencing every misery in the gross environment of his aunties Spiker and Sponge's (Joanna Lumley and Miriam Margolyes) ramshackle cliffside manor.  It's a very contained set, but also finds Selick using his tricks of design and forced perspective on a live-action scale.  Coraline found Selick working with 3D during the brief window of 3D-mania, and (having seen it on the big screen in 3D, I can attest) may be the only great 3D movie of the era.  Watching it in 2D recently, you can see there are moments that would have popped so much more in 3D... it's something even digital animation couldn't do that perhaps only stop-motion could, taking advantage of that extra dimension.  With Wendell & Wild, Selick wanted to step outside of telling a kid's story, securing a PG-13 commitment from Netflix before getting started, and so the question is, what can (and what should) he do with that increased latitude?

In every instance, Selick had either a collaborator, or some guiding point.  The discourse on Blank Check was that Selick is a bit of a difficult personality, and can get pretty heated with studios and interference in his work, so obviously it would take a special kind of relationship to get a project off the ground, and then completed.  With Nightmare he had Burton and Danny Elfman (not to diminish the contributions of Caroline Thompson who reworked the screenplay and songs and was dating Elfman at the time).  With James... he had the guidance of Roal Dahl's book, and Neil Gaiman's book for Coraline. For Wendell & Wild, he found an enthusiastic partner in Jordan Peele, who helped rewrite and refocus the script as well as produce and co-star in.  There is the stamp of all these collaborators on these projects, and there aren't huge leaps going from the works of Burton to Dahl to Gaiman to Peele.  They're not direct parallels, but they don't skew too far from one another stylistically.

So few and far between were major stop-motion pictures, and so potent was Burton's name associated with Nightmare, that most major, non-Aardman Studios (Chicken Run, Wallace & Gromit) stop releases, were probably attributed to Burton by the public at large for decades.  I know I thought James... was Burton-affiliated somehow (I guess he was producer).  The next big stop-motion release after James was called "Tim Burton's" Corpse Bride" which Burton is actually credited as co-directing, further solidifying the confusion around Nightmare.  As such, most Laika studios productions -  Coraline, Parnorman, Boxtrolls - were perceived as being Burton-related by the masses, which, if not to the detriment of the film itself likely was detrimental to the directors and studio.  At the same time, Nightmare unfortunately created a sort of template for what an American stop-motion animation film should be - for kids, but a little creepy and weird.  That's the milieu that Selick operates in anyway, but it has hindered productions that aren't that, like Laika's Missing Link (which took in $26 million in box office, compared to the similarly themed, CGI Smallfoot, which was a massive $214 million success).

Nightmare has become such a cultural juggernaut over the past 25 years, spanning Hallowe'en to Christmas, it resurrects itself every year as a double-dipping holiday staple.  It's so visually striking it's inspired all manner of wardrobes, and dammit if it's not one of the best musicals of the past 30 years.  There are songs in James... but nothing remotely as earwormy as even the least of Nightmare's tracks.  In fact, watching James... for the first time recently, I kind of resented that they would even try including songs at all.  It's not a musical, and so they feel a bit half-assed in their insertion.

I dig Nightmare for the scale of the production...it spans multiple realities and intones so many more (I would love a sequel that visited some of the other holiday lands).  It's a visual feast in an exceptionally playful reality with so much to look at in its surreal designs that it can't help but inspire, delight and awe.  James... feels like a pitiable younger brother in comparison.  It's extended drudgery of an opening live action sequence is at once curious and off putting.  It doesn't feel natural at all and it's not friendly or welcoming to the viewer in the slightest.  Once James escapes into clay-mation land, hanging with the bug people, one has to wonder if the poor boy has hit his head and is bleeding out on a rock somewhere, dreaming all this.  In the end it proves it's not a dream and it's all the more confounding for it.  It's a much smaller reality than Selick's other works, though still full of invention and creative design, but it's more tedious than exciting as a story.

Coraline takes Gaiman's pre-teen reader and brings it popping to life, taking whatever liberties it sees fit to be as movement oriented as it can be.  As a character I find Coraline more striking than any of Selick's other designs.  The blue hair, yellow raincoat and mudders are just a wonderfully iconic visual combination (to the point that a doll with blue hair, and yellow raincoat is quickly identified as Coraline).  There's a cleverness to Coraline, in the characters, in the story, in the realities, that is hard to turn away from.  The individual pieces are all so eccentric, in performance, personality and visual design, and Selick doesn't shy away from being cheeky at all (with Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders playing a pair of aged, reclusive former burlesque performer) which makes the production so much livelier that it feels like anything could happen.  Even in the creepy factor, most animation of the past 30 years doesn't have anything as startling as people with buttons for eyes...the opening sequence where a doll is unstitched, restuffed, and resewn, is mildly upsetting (the stitch ripper on the mouth is only a few seconds in!).

Wendell & Wild has a lot going on. It starts with parental death and childhood trauma in its first five minutes, but also has a cracking "afro-punk" soundtrack including X-Ray Spex, Death, the Specials and TV on the Radio. The film is dealing a LOT with demons (metaphorical ones, yes, but I mean here literal demons), but they’re not very nefarious, nor are they very bright or all that threatening, but it’s amazing that all this underworld talk is paired up with the setting of a Catholic school, complete with James Hong’s delightfully scheming headmaster, Father Level Bests, and his old biddy servant nuns (“the penguins” he calls them). That our protagonist, Kat (Lyric Ross), has “the mark”, and develops powers as a “Hellmaiden” as also does the kindly nun, Sister Helly (Angela Bassett) is just mind boggling in the who Catholic context. In almost any other film, we’d be sitting with that dichotomy, but there’s no time to think too much about it here. The Hellmaiden thing is sort of a spoof of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, but again, the film doesn’t have enough time to linger on it. There’s a whole warning about the nefariousness and rot on society that is the prison-industrial complex to get through… and murder, and Kat learning to trust other people (including her new trans friend Raul), and herself again.  It's quite a bit diffrent aesthetically, with Selick messing around more with flatter, more 2-dimensional visual constructs, and scaling back the cleanliness of animation to try and escape any uncanny CGI valley comparisons.

I would love Peele and Selick to team up again, maybe on something even more adult, more in Peele's wheelhouse.  Maybe a proper stop-motion 3D horror film (still need to see Mad God), as it seems like Selick's interests are evolving to wanting to do something more adult in the format he's dedicated his life to.  

If I were to rank these, the difficulty comes in the top two for me, which is whether Coraline is the better film than Nightmare.  I don't even know which I enjoy more.  I've seen Nightmare enough times now that the familiarity doesn't hold my attention as strongly, which I find Coraline has maybe one or two small 3-5 minute sags in it.  I would like it to be just a little tighter.  Nightmare is kind of a phenomenon for a reason, and it's still an incredible viewing experience in spite of the phenomenon, and I think that may be why it gets the edge at top spot, but I don't feel good about it.

Next is easily Wendell & Wild.  It doesn't quite hold up as solidly as a story as Nightmare or Coraline but it's never dull either. Only seeing it the once so far, I wonder how it will withstand multiple viewings, whether it appreciates with knowing where it all goes, or if part of the initial charm is watching it work to sew all its disparate threads together.  James and the Giant Peach is not terrible, but easily the weakest of Selick's work (outside of Monkeybone).  It had its charms but it seems more spartan than the rich worlds Selick otherwise provides.

Three Short Paragraphs: The Bay

2012, Barry Levinson (Rain Man, Wag the Dog) -- download

I wanted to start this review with, "Yep, that is right, a director so Hollywood famous that you know his name, did a B-grade found-footage horror movie." But then I looked at Levinson's IMDB listing and, well, his heyday was quite a while ago. Not that there is anything wrong with that; one thing fame in Hollywood should afford is the right to take things easy, slow down and do the kind of movies you want to, instead of what is just handed to you by the producers having those cafe meetings I always imagine.  But, my point is, he is not trying to make a come back with this, he is not damaging his career, he is just doing a pointed movie about a topic that interested him, in genre fashion.

The movie takes place in a small Chesapeake Bay town. Pieced together from  "found footage", our main character was a fledgling reporter who saw it all first hand. She is coming clean about the ecological disaster caused by sewage run off from a chicken farm. I am not going to spoil anything by saying to you that the stars of the movie are the isopods. Go ahead, Google it. They are the water born cousins of sow bugs that can grow to horror-movie sized critters. And one breed of them is known to eat the tongue of certain types of fish. So, you can see the easy setup here. We are already creeped out by them.

Levinson had read about how Chesapeake Bay was becoming an ecological dead zone due to factory run-offs and other human created contaminates. He wanted to do a movie that brought this to light and ended up with a horror movie, that succeeds in pointing out what is going on, but exaggerates things to the n-th degree. This is not a ground-breaker, not a new revolution in horror film making. It is just a decently done, solidly told story that is equal parts Jaws, zombie movie (think the bio-contaminates ones) and infection movie. It also has hints of the 60s coldwar horror movie, where denial of any wrong-doing plays a big part. But I still wonder whether Levinson sees himself as succeeding, or not, in this genre.

P.S. Nope, no 31 Days of Halloween this year. But we are going to attempt to do a Countdown to Halloween on the last week. I will be starting a new job that week, so maybe.

1 miserable paragraph: Turbo

2013, David Soren

Turbo is a major studio release with some solid names attached as voice-talent (Ryan Reynolds, Samuel L. Jackson, Paul Giamatti, Snoop Dog, Luis Guzman, various SNL alum) but it's strictly a direct-to-video-level effort, painfully so.  Truth is Turbo is a Dreamworks product that wishes it were a Pixar release (with both Kung Fu-Panda and How To Train Your Dragon being premiere-level successes for Dreamworks, I don't know why they're still aspiring to emulate Pixar).  It takes the bugs-eye-view of A Bug's Life, the animal-human interaction of Ratatouille (not to mention the fantasy idol sub-plot), and the never-inspired humdrum of auto racing like Cars, and seems to make no effort to disguise it.  There's the hint of originality in the parallel of older brothers trying to keep their dreamer younger brothers grounded in reality, but one pair are snails (one of which dreams to compete in Formula 1 racing) and the other are taco stand/truck operators (one of which dreams to enter his pet snail in a Formula 1 racing competition).  The ludicrousness is inescapable.  The multi-ethnic cast is admirable, but wasted on, frankly a boring, unfunny, entirely predictable story that will likely entertain only the most inexperienced of movie goers.