TURBO F.A.S.T.

** (out of ****)

I would say that Netflix has figured out how to make all the money, if any of us had a clue as to what kind of ratings Netflix gets, or how much money they actually make. Last week, Netflix premiered its first original children’s show, TurboF.A.S.T., based on the movie about the racing snail, which has actually been popping up on a lot of “wasn’t as bad as you might think” end-of-the-year lists. TurboF.A.S.T. isn’t particularly well animated or well written, but it has the ultimate thing in its pocket: an IP (regardless of how I this P is). Maybe the creators chose this style (it looks a little better than the flash animation we got online in the late nineties) because their budget went to getting the license. Maybe it was a creative choice. The risk is if it looks different enough from the movie that kids will tune out. I’m guessing it won’t matter. At most it will take an episode to get used to, and then kids will just be stoked that they have another three hours or so of Turbo adventures.

    Aside from low production values, the show is just so-so. I didn’t see the movie, so I don’t know if the incredibly Mexican guy and the incredibly Asian woman in the beginning of the show are new or not. Luckily they aren’t on screen long enough to turn this into a Breakfast at Tiffany’s for children. Once they get us from the people world to the snail world, we realize that the show takes place directly after the movie. The snails have built a race track that utilizes all of the character’s strengths, instead of just Turbo’s, whose only strength is to go straightforward. This allows everyone in the crew a chance to save the day, even though it’s ultimately Turbo’s glory. It’s quick and dirty but, outside of the humans, not too offensive. The thing that I kept thinking, though, is that this was the inevitable next step in Netflix’s evolution. This is, most likely, a slam dunk money maker. It proves to parents that Netflix thinks their kids are a priority, so much so that they are creating programming specifically for them. If Netflix needs to release a grip of so-so stuff like this in order to pay for more OISTNB and Arrested Development, who cares?

-Ryan Haley