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.