Go Speed Racer Go!

Wow.

I took Jackson to see Speed Racer this past Saturday, and as of today I still don't really know what to make of it.

In one sentence, I can sum it up as "Racing parts good, non-racing parts…not so much."

First of all let me clarify by saying I have never really cared for the Wachowski Brothers at all. I hated The Matrix and its increasingly poor sequels, and I don't care for Bound either. V for Vendetta is brilliant but of course so was the source material and thankfully they didn't direct it.

Speed Racer is a feature film based on the original Japanese cartoon from the late 1960s. It was the first anime to be successful in the USA, and it features a young boy, Speed Racer, and his family, Pops Racer, Mom, younger brother Spritle and pet monkey Chim-Chim, girlfriend Trixie and the crazy racing adventures they have. Pretty much every story is centered around the Mach 5 race car and a race that Speed is going to enter. Speed also has an older brother, Rex, who supposedly died in a horrible crash - but he believes that the mysterious race car driver Racer X is his in fact his long-lost brother. That's really all you need to know going in to see this, as all of the elements of the cartoon are present and nearly unaltered from the cartoon - Speed even still wears an ascot!

For all the flash and spectacle and innovation this movie is supposed to have it does end up being really extraordinarily mediocre. It is clearly made for fans of the original cartoon, but I am not sure that the people in marketing really understood what they had once they saw a reasonably finished product. None of the trailers I saw beforehand really made it seem like a kid's movie, and it certainly didn't really seem like one for adults either. It seems more like a live-action video game that you're not playing; the CGI and camera movements, colors, track design and racing are so far over the top that it can't help being cartoony.

The dialogue and plot are remarkably similar to the sixties cartoon, which makes people (like me) have a sense of nostalgia - everything I loved as a tiny kid is present in the new movie, from the crazy car stunts to the letter buttons on the steering wheel to the noise the car makes when it jumps - but it all feels really hollow and lifeless. The best comparison I can think of is how Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy feels; it's like they spent all this time and effort on making it just like the original that they forgot to actually make a good story. It's all flash and no substance, and it's such a barrage of sight, sound and color you nearly come out of the theatre gasping. Oddly I don't really have a negative feeling about it though; the casting was all pretty good, especially Christina Ricci as Speed's girlfriend Trixie and Matthew Fox as Jack - I mean Racer X. The fight scenes were corny and kiddie and there's even one scene where the Mach 5 comes to a stop and Speed jumps out of the car and mimics - perfectly - the opening credits of the original cartoon, and I actually said "oh no way!" when they did it that. So ultimately while I enjoyed the trip down memory lane I can't really say it was a good movie, and I certainly don't think it will do well. Is that a shame? Probably, because I believe in the hands of more capable filmmakers it might have been a hit - or at least a fun family summer film. Sadly, it ends up short on both accounts.

Of course all this really means is that my 5-year old LOVED it. He immediately wanted to see it again, but I expected that since he loves the old Speed Racer cartoons and he plays with the cars constantly. That really made the difference for me as a moviegoer; watching him watch it was far more entertaining than anything the Wachowskis could ever have come up with.