Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		5.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.5

A Turtle's Tale: Sammy's Adventures Blu-ray Movie Review

Nemo's still lost, and so is the story.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman March 24, 2012

American audiences can be as chauvinistic about their animated entertainment as about anything else. Pixar, DreamWorks and Disney may have incorrectl convinced audiences in the United States that they are the only game in town, and when some international studio does manage to poke its head above the crowd—say, for example, like Studio Ghibli—it often comes under the imprimatur of some already well established American studio, as in Ghibli’s deal with Disney. But there are of course many international purveyors of excellent animated fare, including tons of houses in Japan that regularly churn out some very inviting anime fare. One country that probably wouldn’t jump to the top of anyone’s list of major animation producers would be Belgium, that kind of jealous sibling of France’s, at least if one is to believe the fictional disdain of Agatha Christie’s famous Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot. And yet here is Sammy’s Adventures: The Secret Passage (actually released on Blu-ray under its United Kingdom title of A Turtle’s Tale: The Adventures of Sammy), one of the more spectacular looking pieces of animation in a Pixar vein in recent memory. This Belgian production was directed by Ben Stassen, the guiding force behind nWave Pictures, Belgium’s answer to Pixar (with Stassen being his studio’s version of John Lasseter). nWave first attracted attention a few years ago with Fly Me to the Moon, a 3D CGI animated film that was released by Summit Entertainment and which was exhibited on IMAX screens nationally. Sammy’s Adventures: The Secret Passage was also released theatrically in 3D but is presented on this Blu-ray in a standard 2D format. Nevertheless, the eye popping visuals often display a nicely three dimensional ambience even if they don’t actually “reach out and touch” the audience.

The film is told as a remembrance by an aged Sammy (turtles can live to be more than a half century old), and as new hatchlings prepare to dig themselves out of the sand, Sammy thinks back to his own struggles to get out of a sandpit some 50 years ago. His life doesn’t exactly start swimmingly (pun intended), as a seagull swoops down and snatched the poor tyke before he can even get his land legs (or flippers, as it were). In the sky he has a brief meeting with another young turtle who has been snatched by a hungry bird, a young female named Shelly (get it?), and Sammy’s struggles help to free both him and the hapless young girl. Unfortunately for Sammy, he plummets to ground and lands on the hard remnants of a raft, pretty much knocking him out, while Shelly has the good fortune to land in a little puddle, enabling her to scurry off to meet her fate in the ocean.

The next morning Sammy discovers that the quasi-raft he’s been on has been swept out to sea, and thus begin the real adventures of the story. Sammy soon is befriended by a “leather”, a gray skinned turtle named Ray (voiced by Anthony Anderson once the boys grow up). Sammy and Ray spend the next several years floating on the Pacific currents, feasting on seaweed and becoming best friends. As they approach adolescence, they’re both scooped up in fishing nets and Sammy through a series of calamities is finally returned to the sea, thinking of course that Ray has met his fate as “turtle soup”. Sammy next gets plopped down on a California beach inhabited by a bunch of hippies, including a sweet lady named Snow (Melanie Griffith).

Snow nurtures Sammy, even while her cat, Fluffy (Tim Curry), convinces the poor lad that he's only being fattened up to serve as food down the line. Also providing some comedy relief here is a brassy older turtle named Vera (Kathy Griffin), whom Snow has deposited next to Sammy in the hopes that they'll mate (fat chance). The pigs (as in police, man – this is the sixties, after all) break up the hippie beach paradise and Sammy is left alone once again to fend for himself. Soon enough Vera reenters the picture and helps the young turtle to find some food. A shark attack soon brings a young female turtle into Sammy’s sphere and of course that turns out to be Shelly, now all grown up (and voiced by Jenny McCarthy). Sammy quickly convinces her to accompany him on a search for a mythical “secret passage” to another ocean. Sammy is all about adventure.

In what turns out to be something of a recurring motif, Sammy and Shelly are once again separated, leading to yet another round of dejection for Sammy, at which point he gets clues she’s alive and looking for him at the “ice ocean”. Sammy manages to get to the ice ocean and is rescued by a Greenpeace type organization, where of course he sees Shelly in another recovery pen, so close and yet so far away. Without belaboring all of the little sequences that then play out, an expected happily ever after leads us back to the present day, with the elderly Sammy (and Ray) greeting their own grand-hatchlings.

This is a brilliant visual feast with some incredibly sharp looking animation, especially in the underwater sequences. Where Sammy’s Adventures: The Secret Passage falls flat is in its storytelling. Perhaps it’s too long a lifespan to try to cram an entire storyline into such a short film (Sammy barely runs an hour and a half), but this film is way too anecdotal for its own good, getting from sequence to sequence with less than ideal bridging sequences showing the globe and Sammy simply floating from locale to locale. The film also is making some none too subtle environmental points (Sammy gets a plastic bag stuck on his head and later is underwater when an Exxon Valdez- esque oil tragedy starts dripping large amounts of goo down below). While these aren’t exactly at the screed level, they may turn off those not especially well disposed to “green” cartoons.

The Pixar films are as successful as they have been (for the most part, anyway) because they’re so brilliantly written. The animation is almost like the icing on the cake in many instances in the Pixar universe, and it’s easy to imagine the films being as impactful as live action films (if that were possible) simply because the writing is so strong. That’s the fundamental flaw in Sammy’s Adventures: The Secret Passage. This is pleasant enough filmmaking, and individual moments are fine, but there’s no real through line here, despite the “quest” structure and Sammy’s repeated efforts to find Shelly.

The window dressing of the animation is an eyeful, however. This is some of the finest computer generated underwater imagery since, well, Finding Nemo. Textures are varied and colors are really beautifully varied and robust, especially in a couple of outstanding sequences featuring coral reefs. The character designs are also inventive and enjoyable. But as chauvinistic as we American audiences can be, we have been spoiled by the fine storytellers at the biggest American animation houses, which means a lot of people stateside are going to find Sammy less than satisfying. It’s a lot of fun to watch, but it’s not especially fun to actually sit through.

A Turtle's Tale: Sammy's Adventures Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Sammy's Adventures: The Secret Passage (AKA A Turtle's Tale: The Adventures of Sammy) is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Vivendi Visual and Studio Canal with a VC-1 encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. As befits something created entirely in a digital world, this transfer is incredibly sharp and well defined, with unbelievably robust color and some eye popping dimensionality. Character designs here are quite distinctive and enjoyable, mixing elements of Finding Nemo and Madagascar. Textures are extremely well rendered and include everything from the seemingly infinite grains of sand that Sammy the hatchling tries to climb through to, more nefariously, the oozing globs of oil that descend and pollute a pristine underworld universe after an oil tanker crashes into a reef. nWave obviously is an animation studio to keep an eye on, one which is poised to really make some waves (sorry) if they can find better screenplays to animate.

A Turtle's Tale: Sammy's Adventures Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Sammy's Adventures: The Secret Passage features a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix which is quite enjoyable and consistently immersive. Of course water sounds provide a wealth of gurgles and bubbling noises populating the surrounds, but a number of great sound effects also help to create some great surround activity. Perhaps surprisingly for a Belgian release, there are some major acts licensed for the soundtrack, including Bruno Mars and the Mamas and the Papas, and all of the music is very nicely opened up for the surround mix and sounds fantastic. There's quite a bit of low end throughout this mix, with a couple of great (and actually surprising) uses of boisterous LFE. Fidelity is excellent throughout the film and dynamic range is also wide and impressive.

A Turtle's Tale: Sammy's Adventures Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

No supplements are included on this Blu-ray disc.

A Turtle's Tale: Sammy's Adventures Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Finding Nemo has remained high on the list of high definition aficionados of releases they'd most like to see on Blu- ray. While Sammy's Adventures: The Secret Passage certainly comes nowhere near to Nemo in story or character, rather amazingly, it comes surprisingly close in animation quality. This is some incredibly pretty and well done animation, certainly worthy of attention from those who like CGI fests. It's the story that's the downfall here, but younger kids will probably get a kick out of Sammy and adults will probably be mesmerized enough by the visuals to tolerate the less than exciting plot. If you're jonesin' for Nemo, Sammy may help to fill some of the time until we finally get the Disney-Pixar opus.