Turbo

[ShyViolet]

The film just has a babyish look to it, which is probably what put people off. Really worried about how this will affect DW's relationship with Netflix.

http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2013-0 ... edown.html

[Ben]

Well, early reviews did say it was aimed at little boys, without much to engage any other family members, which isn't a great way to sell an animated film these days. Plus there's just been so *much* animated fare this year already, including titles from DreamWorks itself, and there's only so much family spending to go around.

With two titles in a row underperforming, things don't look good for DW, and I honestly don't think Peabody & Sherman is going to make much of a dent either. The characters, like Lone Ranger, are now unknown to younger people, and almost non-existently internationally.

The biggest problem with Turbo was that it looked too derivative, too ("Carsatouille", anyone?), and was it me or was there a general lack of advertising for it? It's yet to open here in the UK but I haven't seen anything about it, unlike previous DWs films that get teased on DVDs and online a lot more.

Interesting that the 3D is so down, but not a surprise. The gimmick has only been accounting for around or less 50% of grosses in the past two summers, with some films choosing *not* to post convert as producers feel it wouldn't be worth it. Animated films can be rendered out native, but from what I heard the 3D on Turbo is a head-spinner and, again as with so many family films out this summer, people are just not going to keep paying more for tickets that can actually reduce the viewing enjoyment as much as they suggest they enhance the experience.

3D is on a sliding slope...I think we'll see less and less titles equipped with the added dimension, especially now that several huge tentpoles have died this year and proven that the craze is over and it doesn't guarantee any kind of box-office boosting.

Let's see how far the Turbo TV series goes...I can't believe they're franchising this out already - and a TV series based on a flimsy premisce to begin with? What's going to happen each week? A different race in a different city or country? How, um, "exciting"...?

I'll likely see Turbo on Blu-ray, but may wait for a price drop. Just can't say I'm at all eager to see it quickly, and audiences seem to agree.

Now all eyes will be on Planes...

[EricJ]

As one poster put it on another forum:

Yes, never give up on your dreams, kids, because one day -- you, too might fall into a pool of chemicals and emerge as something never ever known to exist in the entire realm of biological history. Kids, even though you are a humanoid mammal, and not an automotive machine, you too might be allowed to enter yourself into an auto race even though you're not actually driving an automotive machine! If a snail can do it, by gum, who says you can't? Keep dreaming those crazy dreams, and reaching for the stars!

That's really one of the whole problems with DW: Whether or not he's in his lab late at night trying to chemically replicate the Pixar Formula ("Eureka! Pixar makes movies about impossible dreamers!") Katzenberg doesn't understand the sympathetic passion of characters that made us want to root for them--Like, to use the Ratatouille comparison, the scene where Remy explains that food is music and cooking is jazz, and that the mean critic wasn't "defeated", but that he found the heart of the food.
No, in Katz's world, he felt "picked on" at Disney, and is now free with his own studio to make movies like Megamind or Kung Fu Panda, about picked-on dreamers--usually self-delusional losers, so that we know that they're "dreamers", you understand--who dream about not being picked on anymore. And naturally, of course, we have no shortage of annoying and equally self-delusional impotent sitcom bullies to do the picking, and, to use the MST3K quote, the reason this's all so involving is, we care about the characters!

You can polish a turd, but a turd is something that comes out afterwards--How do you solve the basic problem inside?

[ShyViolet]

What about Spirit, POE, Shrek, HTTYD and KFP? Those all had protagonists we cared about, didn't they? And if you thnk about it the dreamer looking for more formula originated during Katz's days at Disney with Little Mermaid and Beauty, spilling over into Aladdin, LK, Pocahontas, etc...Sure, it has its origins with Walt (Cinderella, SW) but it was refined during the Katzenberg/Ashman days. (And of course Ashman's Bdway formula was greatly influenced by classicDisney.)),
DW has a lot on its plate right now, and I also have doubts not only about Peabody but about Lassie as well. Like Ben said kids nowadays won't remember or care about these charaters. This might sound strange but part of me still hopes Disney will buy DW; it would make things a lot easier for them IMHO as not EVERY film would need to make gigantic bucks and break records.

[EricJ]

Uh, Spirit and POE don't really enter into this historical period of the discussion--They're from back during the 2D pre-Sinbad days, when Katz thought that melodramatic Lion King would set DW up for life.
(And POE promised so much, but then Brave came along to crush our dreams... )
HTTYD was the Emergency DIsney Blood Transfusion, and...didn't we already cover KFP in the post? The one where we're technically supposed to root for Po, but they've all got all their money invested in Jack Black doing his slacker-loser shticks?

As for Peabody, it's not so much whether the kids remember them, it's whether the writers remember them. DW is ENTIRELY focused on seeing adult TV network sitcoms as the be-all and end-all of "Humor adults can enjoy along with their kids", and Jay Ward had a much more instinctive grasp of what that really meant.
And Lassie...well, let JK have fun rooting through his new Classic Media toybox for now, he thinks he can play with them all.

[Dacey]

Yeah....none of that is true....

As for Turbo...the reviews I've read seem be by critics who like the film, yet seem to have been written on a conveyer belt. "The movie was entertaining and clever, but it wasn't PIXAR, so I'm gonna give it a negative review." Even worse is the whole "Well, everybody hated Cars, which is why this movie isn't making money" theory, which is bogus, especially when you look back and see that Cars was actually really well-reviewed when it came out.

It's terrible timing. Plain and simple. And at the end of the day, it's Fox that should be blamed for that.

[ShyViolet]

I agree. I really hope HTTYD 2 is better scheduled.

[Dacey]

At the moment, the only movie sharing its release date is "Think Like a Man Too." Also, Dragon literally opens the day before summer "officially" begins. Should be a hit unless they really screw the marketing up.

[ShyViolet]

I hope so. DW's future is really uncertain right now.

[Ben]

Well, that's the problem of making one movie at a time and needing it to be a hit so they can make the next one.

[Bill1978]

I think it's also the problem of releasing more than one movie a year, personally. maybe I'm the odd one out but I get more excited for the annual canonical Disney or Pixar release than I do for the Dreamworks release, I feel if I miss one dreamworks one, I know there is just another one around the corner, so they don't end up being must see movies.

[James]

A few days late but here it is:

http://animatedviews.com/2013/turbo-film/

[Ben]

Ouch! But true!

[Bill1978]

Loved the 3 levels of Good for the rating movies. They were very very spot on.

Based on this review I will probably wait for the DVD and even then I probably won't rush out to buy like I plan to with The Croods which I missed at the cinemas. Although it sounds like Turbo would be the perfect movie to show my 3 year old godson.

[ShyViolet]

According to JK Turbo will be ultimately profitable:

http://m.deadline.com/2013/07/jeffrey-k ... rofitable/