We
might as well keep plundering the Earth and maybe the current administration is
right, we can just relax and stop worrying about the Iranian nuclear program.
After all, the late 1990s apocalypse our 1980s exploitation films warned us about
never came to fruition. Take a sentimental journey back to those more innocent,
alarmist times in Anouk Whissel, François Simard & Yoann-Karl Whissel’s Turbo Kid (trailer here), which screens
during the 2015 Sundance Film Festival.
In
the not too distant future, 1997 A.D. to be precise, a handful of BMX bikers
roam the wasteland, clashing with the mutant lackeys of the overlord Zeus. The
Kid tries to keep to himself, scavenging comic books and Viewmaster slides. At
first, he is a bit annoyed when a girl named Apple starts tagging along with
him. However, he soon finds he enjoys her sweetly looney company, even when he
learns she is a robot. He duly fashions her a garden gnome club as a weapon,
but it cannot compare to the turbo powered gauntlet he salvaged from a crashed
government transport. Unfortunately, just as they become an effective dynamic
duo, Apple is damaged in a dust-up with Zeus’s goons, forcing them on a
perilous detour in search of spare parts.
Basically,
there are just a few really big laughs in Turbo,
unless you dig on ridiculously gory slapstick violence in the Troma tradition,
in which case it is fully loaded. You’ll lose track of how many bodies are
cleaved apart in bizarre and unlikely ways. It is so over the top, you have to
just buy into it on its own terms. As a result, it is almost impossible to
envision Turbo playing in a normal
neighborhood theater on a sleepy Wednesday afternoon.
Basically,
you know Whissel, Simard & Whissel came to play when cult superstar Michael
Ironside shows up as the eye-patch wearing Zeus. MacLeod’s Daughters star Aaron Jeffery is also acceptably grizzled
as the Kid’s ally, Frederic the Arm-Wrestler (but don’t get too attached to his
paws, so to speak). However, you really have to give credit to Laurence Leboeuf
for going all in as the super chipper Apple.