A Turtle's Tale: Sammy's Adventures

Film dubbing is a lost art. Many of us look back fondly to the time when every kung-fu movie, Italian horror flick and foreign film outside of the arthouses was voiced by a parade of gruff, bored-sounding Californian ‘voice artists’. But those days are gone: even trash is subtitled now. Which makes the likes of ‘A Turtle’s Tale’ something of a throwback: an animated film made in Belgium but re-voiced for the British market, this drab, predictable family adventure is enlivened no end by the hilariously inappropriate voice cast the producers have roped in.

It starts with John Hurt in full fireside-chat mode as the voice of Sammy, a kindly, ageing sea turtle looking back over a life spent roaming the oceans of the world: cue flashback, as Sammy is born, makes friends, falls in love and is adopted by a VW-driving Californian hippy who talks like a member of the ‘EastEnders’ cast. Yes, wherever Sammy goes, everyone he meets is English: sharks, seagulls, even an American cop. The result is like ‘Finding Nemo’ meets ‘Eurotrash’, only not quite as fun as that sounds.

Elsewhere, there’s little to recommend ‘A Turtle’s Tale’: the characters are thin, the dialogue is bland and the animation is plasticky, though the 3D effects are sometimes interesting in a lurid, sub-Pixar fashion. It’s all tied together with a blunt, patronising ecological message about protecting wildlife and respecting the oceans. Respecting the audience is lower on the agenda.