Movie Review: “Speed Racer” is giving me flashbacks.
May 2nd, 2008 by intr0vert
Show of hands, how many people expect “Speed Racer” to suck? Come on, be honest, I read message boards, I’ve heard your podcast, you aren’t thrilled at all, are you? The print campaign with the cars on the track is messy and the trailer was lukewarm. It’s not nearly the campaign of say, Iron Man, which is already a sure thing summer blockbuster to be. But maybe all of this bad publicity could have let you down again; because there may be a lot of very satisfied uber-nerds on May 9th when the Wachowski brothers’ “Speed Racer” live-action living comic book candy fireball sensory orgy hits theatres. I expected to be underwhelmed by this movie, writing it off as effects laden fluff but I might have found a bit more in it than the rest of the public.
The story is sparse and plays 2nd fiddle to the technically awe-inspiring visual effects, but I should hope you didn’t expect a repeat of the depth of the Matrix from this Manga-to-Anime-to-Live Action film. I appreciated that the storytelling was delivered at times in a liquid form with visuals co-mingling with the narrators as the timelines wrapped and coiled into themselves. The film centers around the Racer family: Pops, played by John Goodman – a racecar builder devoted to his family; His wife, referred to only as Mom, played with beautiful sentiment by Susan Sarandon; Rex, the eldest brother who dies in a shady racing accident; Emile Hirsch’s Speed, the prodigal son; Christina Ricci as Trixie, Speed’s love interest and best friend; and of course the comic relief, Speed’s Kid Brother Spritle and his monkey Chim-Chim. During the story Speed shuns the corporate sponsors who have corrupted racing to stay in business with his family and has to race to save their reputation and the very sport of racing.
Casting was spot on as the actors held this movie together wonderfully through the effects. The females that I saw this movie with admitted to misting up during a scene between Sarandon and Hirsch. Christina Ricci seemed to get hotter in the grimier moments of the film and although the dialogue like everything else becomes saccharine to the point of aspartame, the perfomances are true and warm. Adding emotion to a primarily green screen movie can’t be an easy task but each of the characters indeed has their opportunity to shine. And Oh how this movie shines. Us designers had conferred that the movie was more of an animated film than live action. Stylistically the exact polar opposite of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
I mentioned that this movie is eye candy right? Can I maybe repeat that a thousand more times? Maybe thats not decadent or bright enough to describe its seizure-inducing effects and Japanese inspired hyper surrealism. Think of having neon injected straight into your brain through your eyeballs. Maybe if you just lined your skill with an OLED TV above your Pineal gland. You know that feeling the morning after you’ve been tripping balls and know you are still kinda tripping because stuff is still kinda melty and the walls are still breathing a little bit? I kinda got a little of that going right now after seeing “Speed Racer” this afternoon. This is the exact movie that IMAX was made for. Not so coincidentally, it will be released in said format as well. I recommend that venue but only if you want your brain to turn to a happy pile of overstimulated nerd mush.
My proper introduction to Speed Racer happened sometime around 1996 when a pre-Adult Swim Cartoon Network had a sort of marathon one stormy Saturday night. I’d only seen a couple scattered episodes but when I sat down in front of the TV that night I expected to see 1 episode but what happened was them showing literally hours and hours of the show, in sequence and seemingly without commercial interruption. I was pretty immersed in the story. And what I saw today was a pretty faithful translation of that. Sure the characters are simple, sure the production designers have blown everything out of proportions; but you will learn within the first 10 minutes of this movie is that the filmmakers consciously decided that if they were going to make an over-the-top living cartoon, then the only way to do it is to go WAAAAAAAY over the top. There are some disgustingly kiddie moments in this film. I have an aversion to the use of chimps in films anyway but to summarize (like i never do), there was monkey poo. And unfortunately it was in the middle of a pretty good 60’s Batman style “Bank! Crash! Ka-Pow!” fight scene.
Assuredly there will be doomsayers next week saying the movie is “unfocused”, “simple” and “confused about it’s demographic” but it’s just because most film reviewers think they should squash a movie that doesn’t appeal to them, well, news flash, IT’S PROBABLY JUST NOT FOR THEM! This isn’t a movie that you have to bring any more of your brain to than the part that WANTS TO HAVE FUN …And maybe the part that controls bladder function, cause this movie is 2 hours long and there aren’t many places you can safely wizz without missing something.
Some people have said that they are put off by the video game-like graphics of the trailers, well then maybe you won’t like the movie. But there is a much better chance that you will get totally sucked in by the ultra-saturated seizure inducting shininess of this movie that simply never lets up. Half of this film is on par in action with the Pod Race scene in Episode 1 with the inevitable final race that will surely rival its excitement. Remember how you gasped the first time you saw the 18 Wheeler-collision scene in the Matrix Reloaded? There are a couple of those moments in this movie for sure. And isn’t that what an overblown summer blockbuster is all about?
On the DeadLantern.com 10 point rating scale I give “Speed Racer” a 7.5 overall with a 9.75 for the effects.
