Turbo Kid

The elevator pitch for Turbo Kid is ‘Mad Max on a BMX’ and with that simple sentence you begin to understand just a sliver of the lunacy in this debut full length feature from directorial trio François Simard, Anouk Whissell and Yoann-Karl Whissell.  Set in a post apocalyptic 1997, it is an homage to 80’s action movies and sets out purely to entertain.

Following The Kid, a teenage boy who lives alone and survives by scavenging and trading what he finds.  However, his life is turned on its head when he meets Apple, a young girl who defines the term quirky.  When she is kidnapped by the evil Zeus, The Kid takes inspiration from his comic book hero, Turbo Man, to save his new friend.

What follows is an ultra violent spectacle that see’s people being dismembered on a regular basis, generally in very funny ways.  The action is very much central to this film and in among the fountains of fake blood it is really cleverly done.  While it’s never going to reach the big budget insanity of films like Fury Road, it all flows nicely and provides more than enough innovative entertainment to keep an audience engaged.

The next big success in the film is the central conceit that rather than barreling around in cars, everyone is riding bikes.  It’s an incredibly simple idea, which adds a constant source of amusement to the film.  Every time some big burly henchman comes riding in on a bicycle you can’t help but laugh.

Performance wise, Laurence Leboeuf steals the show as Apple.  It’s a role that is so quirky that it would have been very easy for it to become annoying, but she keeps it on the right side of likable and funny.  Munro Chambers is solid as The Kid and Michael Ironside seems to have a lot of fun ramping the evil up to eleven as the sinister Zeus.  There are a few moments in the film where the acting is a bit wooden and does struggle, but it is never bad enough to take away from the film.

Turbo Kid knows exactly what it is.  It’s over the top, ridiculous, violent and fun and it revels in that.  By paying tribute to the ridiculous movies of the 80’s, but giving it that modern shine, it creates a film that is just really fun to watch and full of moments that you will want to watch again and again.