Speed and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Movie
Warning: Do not see this movie immediately before a longish freeway drive home. Doing so may result in speeding tickets and/or death by trying to flip off the freeway.
Also, epileptics may want to skip out.
Insert opening joke about LSD here! Yes, the Speed Racer movie is incredibly vibrant in its visuals, with plenty of slapstick and gags and goofy facial expressions that I’m willing to bet will be off-putting to some. It’s…dare I say it?…cartoony. Gloriously so.
If you go into this movie expecting some kind of deep, serious, or even witty film, you will be disappointed: Speed Racer is none of these things. However, if you’re the sort of person who can throw off all the elitist pretentions and just sit back and enjoy a fun, over-the-top action flick, you won’t have wasted your money– though I fear you IMAX goers may find yourselves getting a little motion sick in some of the scenes.
I didn’t think it was anywhere near as bad as critics seem to be saying, such as MSNBC’s Alonso Duralde, who I’m only mentioning because I do really like his suggestion that the film is like “pouring hot, melted Starburst candies into your corneas.”
It’s light on plot, and some of the dialogue is pretty iffy (”Inspector Detector suspected that…” Yeah, right). The bad guys are decidedly of the black-hat sort, although there’s a reason why the good guys’ helmets have racing stripes instead of being pure white– I’d argue that our hero Speed becomes even more aggressive and violent as the film continues. But there are a lot of fun references to the original show (such as the cameo from original Speed dub voice actor Peter Fernandez, the repeated refrain of the “go speed racer go-oooo” bit of the anime’s theme, and little brother Spritle watching a subtitled Japanese show) and there’s more than enough to feast your eyes on at any given moment.
Not to say it was perfect; some of Spritle’s antics are a little too predictable (like the candy obsession), and for all that Christina Ricci is amazingly hot, her performance felt a little too tongue-in-cheek, wink-at-the-screen at a couple of moments for me…though it’s nice to see Trixie get a couple of badass moments in as well.
John Goodman as Pops was a fantastic casting idea, and they throw you for a nice little loop with Racer X at one point as well. Korean pop star Rain is fun to watch in his role as rival/ally Taego Tojohkan (oh yeah, there’s a bunch of shady Japanese companies involved– this is cars, after all –and a Korean guy obviously might as well be Japanese, right?), albeit largely for his attractive face and that really awesome black-with-pink-streaks ‘do.
I think you may be sensing the theme here: Speed Racer will not weigh down your brain in any way, shape, or form, nor is it supposed to. If you even notice the plot, you may decide it’s just getting in the way of all the pretty, shiny things. But the pretty, shiny things are extremely pretty and shiny, so it’s a fun watch– especially with a group of friends and a really big screen. I’m afraid we probably ticked off some of the people in the theater with our little whispered MST3K channeling. Oops.
Tags: reviews, Speed-Racer
May 10th, 2008 at 11:22 am
Wow, you were much more generous to this film than I was in my review. lol
May 10th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
@L.B. I wasn’t generous at all; I was completely honest. :) And you noted in your review that you expected a train wreck. Expectations are probably 90% of what one’s movie expectations consist of. @_@;
May 10th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
^_^ I was just using generous as a default adjective of praise. With all the press and publicity for the film though, it was impossible to walk in without some kind of initial opinion of what I had seen thus far. I did give it a chance though.
Btw, will you be attending the Death Note or Bleach screenings in Portland?
May 10th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
@LB: I dunno, I managed to pretty well avoid getting any expectations based on what I heard– and I avoided reading the reviews when they started coming out as well. So I went in hoping for just some fun and I got it in spades :)
I won’t be seeing Bleach for sure (…dub…). Death Note is a possibility since it’s screening during the brief interim between my Acen and Fanime/Akon trips, but we’ll see if I have any sanity left for it ;)
May 11th, 2008 at 6:49 pm
“Also, epileptics may want to skip out.”
And I wanted to see it so badly. ~.~ Stupid entertainment industry and your flashing lights.