Delayed Reaction: Turbo

The Pitch: Let's tell a story about a Snail in the Indy 500. No, not like a Ratatoille thing. The snail actually races. I don't care how we have to make it work...Involve a taco stand too.

What Took Me So Long: A kid's movie. It came out on the weekend of the great Ryan Reynolds bloodbath. A lot working against it.

Why I Saw It: (Club 50) This is a bizarre movie, but one with likability to spare. Ryan Reynolds is fun. Paul Giamatti is broadly comedic. No one really sounds like they are phoning it in (which theoretically could actually be done for voice acting). It's so dense with absurdity that it almost all works. Turbo is a snail who is a fan of racing, gets supercharge powers from the engine of a car during a drag race, happens to get picked up by a guy who races snails competitively, gets entered into the Indy 500 (bypassing all the Nascar series requirements to get in, by the way) in a bid to save a taco stand. This comes close to deserving the title "Beautiful Disaster".

Why I Wish I Hadn't: Because, make no mistake, this was a disaster. When Fox got the distribution rights for Dreamworks from Paramount, they hoped for much more. Everyone involved seemed to ignore the reaction people had to the sentence "A snail races in the Indy 500". It's a charming movie but one that stretches what makes sense a little too much. A couple good jokes (birds repeatedly taking one of the snails got a chuckle every time) isn't enough to make up for a mess of a story pitch gone awry.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend