movie review
Speed Racer
Classic Cartoon Lags on the Big Screen
My 13-year-old son and his friend loved this movie, declaring it one of the best they’d ever seen. After the movie ended, they were able to describe in great detail the race scenes, all of which resembled a colorful video game with matchbox cars doing impossible stunts that could never happen in real life.
Meanwhile, my 11-year-old daughter and I thought it was one of the lamest movies we’d ever seen — a weird cartoon-like story with a family drama that seemed hopelessly out of place. In short, this movie might appeal to you, or it might not.
“Speed Racer” had its beginnings as a cartoon series that ran on TV from 1967 to 1968. Since then, it’s spawned several incarnations of TV and video games, and has been referenced in various venues, including “Mystery Science Theater 3000,” “The X-Files,” and “Scrubs.” Clearly, it has a following.
The story begins with “Speed” Racer (Nicholas Elia), a young boy who draws pictures of cars in his school notebooks and loves hanging out with his older brother, racing hot-shot Rex Racer (Scott Porter). After a racing incident causes a rift between Rex and his dad, Pops (John Goodman), Rex leaves home and enters a cross-country rally that ends in tragedy.
Speed (played as a grown-up by Emile Hirsch) grows up to follow in Rex’s footsteps, racing the Mach 5, a car designed by Pops, who runs a race-car design company with his wife (Susan Sarandon).
But politics and insider pay-offs rule in the racing business, and the wealthy owner of Royalton Industries (Roger Allam) makes Speed a lucrative offer, complete with new digs for the family in the company’s plush compound. Unwilling to bow down to the big guys, Speed rejects the offer, sending Royalton into a rage.
In the process, Speed learns that high-powered corporations are fixing races and cheating to pad their profits. Royalton vows to make sure Speed never wins a race, but doesn’t realize that Speed is partnering with one-time rival, Racer X (Matthew Fox), to rescue the family business and bring honor back to the world of racing. Speed’s girlfriend, Trixie (Christina Ricci) is there to help, as are little brother Spritle (Paulie Litt) and his pet monkey.
I get the feeling the filmmakers tried to make a cartoon with real people. Splashes of color are everywhere, from the primary-colored furniture in the Racer house to cities silhouetted with jewel-toned roads and skyscrapers.
The race scenes are also colorful, with cartoon-like stunts of cars flipping over and racing on matchbox-type tracks that bend and circle over and around each other. If you get woozy with lots of action and movement, you might want to close your eyes during about 80% of this movie.
The story also includes a family drama of Pops coming to terms with Rex and Speed, and the annoyingly nasal-voiced Sarandon as the encouraging mom with her pencil-holder hairdo. It seemed very out of place when paired with the cartoon elements, like someone forgot to check for continuity in post-production.
In short, if you’re a nut about matchbox cars or video games or the original “Speed Racer” cartoon series, then you might like this movie. Otherwise, I’m not really sure of its appeal.
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