"Turbo Kid" is the kind of movie that you don’t exactly expect to enjoy. The premise is a boy (The Kid) lives by himself in a post-apocalyptic wasteland set in an alternate 1993. He meets a girl named Apple, who becomes his friend and then gets kidnapped. He then finds the costume of a comic book superhero and uses it to try and save his friend.
The movie is an independent Canadian film that premiered during the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, and unlike most independent films, this one knows it’s goofy, weird and embraces that while telling a touching story about friendship, love and acceptance.
"Turbo Kid" takes a relatively simplistic idea: "Mad Max" meets indie youth coming-of-age film (pick any of the thousand that exist), and does something really neat — it just lets everything presented play out. The ideas presented are never presented with any irony, and it’s refreshing. All the people ride bikes, the main character wears a superhero costume, and the most threatening villain wears football armor. But there is absolutely no irony.
That’s because the movie is presented in the viewpoint of the two main characters, The Kid, played by Munro Chambers, and Apple, played by Laurence Leboeuf. The two each have an innocence that the audience is exposed to through the story world. The Kid grew up trading mutant rats for water and comic books, and chewing ancient gum to hang posters in his underground hideout — appropriately decorated with cool junk reminiscent of "Wall-E." These are the realities of his life, and they’re the facts of his world. So, when you see The Kid look through a viewfinder toy and talk about how the stars in the sky are just the souls of dead people. It’s just his world being explained to the audience.
So, the protagonist’s innocence is very evident. He shies away from the adult and the mature, and feels uncomfortable with almost every adult character because they’re all the hyper-hardened tough wasteland characters. It almost helps, this movie douses it’s actors in so much red corn syrup they could give a kid diabetes.
The ultra-violent "Turbo Kid" uses in its fight scenes is comical in several places because, in between people getting hands and heads cut off, The Kid is riding around on a rainbow bike and getting his first kiss. The movie makes this innocence the normal behavior, which it is in real-life, the norm in the mindset of the audience, and then the crazy violence and macho machismo are always in these sorts of movies seem silly and goofy. It’s telling that the silliest character at times is a grizzled cowboy wanderer constantly chomping on cigars. In another movie, he’d be our lead man.
The music is great, the effects are hilarious, and the characters are interesting. It’s the kind of movie you watch and then look around for similar types of films to watch because it’s just that great. It’s honest and funny. This film was so rad.
