Turbo Kid review: A nostalgia trip, this sci-fi adventure at JioMAMI will take you back to your childhood

There are movies made for regular audiences, and there are movies made for audiences who love cinema. With this year’s Kung Fury and now Turbo Kid, there’s a new, smaller segment of films made for audiences who loved cinema when they were kids. It’s hard to describe what these films are, except for the fact that they remind you that movies are amazing and that your childhood was also awesome. [caption id=“attachment_2496562” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Screengrab from the video. YouTube[/caption] Telling you the story of Turbo Kid is a futile exercise because this is pretty much Mad Max for kids. We’re introduced to an alternate post-apocalyptic 1997 Earth where a bunch of survivors try to rebuild society. A kid, hilariously named The Kid (Munro Chambers) is a tiny version of Mad Max who scavenges the wasteland for items on his bike and fends off goons. He becomes friends with Apple (Laurence Leboeuf) who is also homeless and alone like him, and thereby a soul mate. Somehow The Kid gets embroiled in a war between Frederic (Aaron Jeffrey), an arm wrestling champion and the baddies Zeus (Michael Ironside) and his crony Skeletron (Edwin Wright). Luckily for The Kid, he finds a suit that has special ass kicking powers to fight against Zeus and become the savior of mankind. What did you enjoy when you were a kid? Name three things, piece them together and you get a plot thread of the film. Retro is in. There are pink haired girls, bald one eyed baddies, cowboys in a sci fi setting, goons dressed in armor, flying buzzsaws that chop of people’s necks, heroes dressed like the Power Rangers, gloves that shoot laser that destroys monsters in a single zap, jaws being torn off, crossbows and video game style font. Everything you loved in your childhood in present in bundles. Turbo Kid, on that front brings out the kid in you. The low budget adds some weird charm to the crazy visuals of the film, especially in the showdowns between the Kid and Zeus. The performances are all hilariously over the top, and there’s plenty of gore to keep things lovingly schlocky. The fight scenes are a blast, most fun of which is a sequence in a pool where The Kid, Apple and Frederick tag together and battle baddies with rapidly degrading weapons and dwindling batteries. There’s rock and synth music reminiscent of arcade games from the 80’s, and although the action doesn’t escalate throughout the film but comes in spurts the bits of crazy ultraviolent mayhem are great fun. The whole film does feel like a video game that someone else is playing, but its is such tremendous fun that you keep watching. Whether you want to call this a pastiche or homage to video games, Mad Max and the Power Rangers, Turbo Kid is a blast. Directors Francois Simard, Anouk Whissell, Yoann-Karl Whissell sure know how to tap into your inner child. The film works both as a B-movie nostalgia trip and also as a cute little story about friendship between two lost souls. It’s too bad the film didn’t have a big marketing push and the mainstream crowd didn’t get to see it on the big screen. But if do you get such a chance, do not miss it.