Speed Racer – Film Review | h Magazine's hmonthly.com

Speed Racer – Film Review

Posted on 01. May, 2008 by Administrator in Film/TV

by Brent Simon

It’s perhaps appropriate that I caught Larry and Andy Wachowski’s Speed Racer in the miserable throes of a head cold/flu, hopped up on a cocktail of over-the-counter meds. After all, it’s essentially the big-screen equivalent of a hallucinatory cattle prod to the senses.

A hyper-charged, gumball-colored family flick, Speed Racer’s production design seems inspired by Dick Tracy, The Cat and The Hat, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; the action by Ice Cube’s biker flick Torque based on the old cartoon by Tatsuo Yoshida. The film debuts simultaneously in conventional theaters and on IMAX screens, and certainly has to set some sort of cinematic record for screen wipes. It’s shot in tight close-ups, and never lets you forget that it’s a movie.

A funny thing happens on the way to the dull sensory overload: the exacting construction of the Wachowskis’ script, as well as some invested performances by its cast, creates enough of an emotional through-line that one can, with a hard squint, almost take Speed Racer seriously. Almost.

As his name would suggest, the pure thrill of driving is everything to young Speed (Emile Hirsch). Racing is in his blood, and the mechanical skill of his father Pops (John Goodman), the designer of his thundering Mach 5, and the support of his Mom (Susan Sarandon) and longtime gal pal Trixie (Christina Ricci) have helped lay a sturdy foundation for Speed, even if he is still haunted by the memory of his older brother Rex.

After turning down the ego-maniacal owner (Roger Allam) of Royalton Industries, Speed finds himself grappling with the realization that racing isn’t just about honest competition – it’s big business, and a dirty one at that. Teaming up with Inspector Detector (Benno Fürmann) and the mysterious Racer X (Matthew Fox), he sets out to foil Royalton and other corrupt corporate interests.

Like other Hollywood studio-peddled tales cautioning about the reach of big business or government (Paul Weitz’s In Good Company, and the Wachowski-produced V for Vendetta, say), the anti-establishment story at the core of Speed Racer seems a bit incongruous if pondered for too long. I’d allow, though, that just as with the Matrix series, the Wachowskis manage to undeniably create a new thing here: the movie is a technical marvel on many levels. Yet for all its ample visual pop, the set-piece racing scenes that are frequently awash in nearly 100% computer-generated imagery unfortunately washed over me. All the special effects render them into, well, just a big cartoon – or a videogame that someone else is playing, and of which you have no rooting interest.

Late in the film, a stylized, group-rumble fight sequence plays as the logical, hyped-up extension of the old bam! pow! Batman TV fisticuffs. Rightly or wrongly, after bullet-time, this scene feels like a water-treading ploy for wide-scale embrace; an acquiescence to the corporate cookie-cutter culture that Speed Racer claims to rail against.

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