Speed Racer

Speed Racer

Yup, I saw it. Actually, a friend at my local comic book store wanted me to see it so badly that he gave me $10 to do so. I couldn't turn him down after that. So, me and the hubby went today.

Basic Premise:

Speed Racer (yes that's really his name) and the rest of the Racer family own their own car company (a mom and pop place) and they go up against the big wigs in an effort to change the face of racing and make it an honest sport once more.

First and foremost I must say, this movie probably would have been five hundred times better if I'd been high off my ass. :D It was totally psychedelic. I mean, complete with pinwheeling geometric shapes and strobe effects, not to mention the ultra-technicolors.

When I originally saw the preview for this movie, I figured it would be full of car effects and racing with a fluffy, cotton candy coating of plot. And it was, though the plot had more air time than the racing, which made the movie a little longer than it should have been. BUT, set up the audience nicely for the ending.

This movie was exactly what you would expect to get if you turned a cartoon live action while sticking to the essence of the cartoon. I really don't see any other way this film could have been done. If the producers and directors had tried to take it the serious route, it would have ended up cheesy and campy as hell. That's not to say it wasn't cheesy and campy, but I truly can't imagine this as a serious movie. It would have been Fast and Furious with trick cars.

This movie is going in my DVD collection once it comes out. I recommend seeing it in theaters simply to get the full experience of the special effects, which was what my friend from the comic store said and he was right.

The only bad part of the movie wasn't the movie's fault. My husband and I had the entire theater to ourselves, literally. I guess someone thought no one was watching because a half hour from the end of the movie, it turned off and the slide show started. Yes, we were hot. The movie's almost over and it stops. What the hell!??

My husband went for a manager and it came back. The manager was so sorry about the situation that he gave us four (yes 4) free passes. Since we were planning on seeingIron Man again and then The Incredible Hulk as a double feature once Hulk released, those tickets came right on time.

Recommendations: Star Trek (2009), Avatar, 300

D. Renee Bagby<br />
Building New Realms of Passion<br />
http://dreneebagby.com

Speed Racer: The Fast and the Fantabulous

The critics deep-sixed it. But The Movie Slut had to see for herself.

What she saw was a cartoon/video game/movie with real actors and a comic book theme: The triumph of good over evil.

She also saw Emile Hirsch, who should have won Oscar's best actor for "Into the Wild." What wrong with you, Academy of Motion-Sickness?

She also saw Susan Sarandon, John Goodman and a flick so over-the-top that it makes Everest look like an anthill.

Fun? You bet. Feel the need for Speed.

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See you at the movies, The Movie Slut

Speed Racer

Oh God this post is super late. So anyway, went to watch Speed Racer. Was really psyched. It's done by the Wachowski brothers, the same dudes who gave me my favorite film of all time, The Matrix. And I like Speed Racer. I used to watch it every Saturday morning on NTV7. I enjoyed the film, but it was really bad.



The movie is about 18 year old Speed Racer played by Emile Hirsch who's life revolves around race car driving. He gets a big break to sign on with a huge racing company but turns it down to stay with his family. Speed also uncovers a secret that top corporate interests, including Royalton, are fixing races and cheating to gain profit. With the offer to Speed denied, Royalton wants to ensure that Speed will not win races. Speed finds support from his parents and his girlfriend Trixie and enters The Crucible in a partnership with his one-time rival, Racer X, seeking to rescue his family's business and the racing sport itself.



I did like that Speed Racer stayed true to it's original cartoon form. The visuals are so over the top in this. It's all flashy, so fluid like and kind of fake. I felt like I was having an epileptic seizure watching Speed Racer. It's great they paid homage to the anime series but they should have toned it down just a bit for the film. It looked really out of place, you know what I mean?



But what's great, and I mean great, are the race scenes. They were incredibly breakneck fast-paced action set pieces and just one after another the race sequences gets even more intense. Though I did feel the car gadgets like that jumping thing was slightly odd, I liked the racing. So any of ya'll looking for some adrenaline pumping goodness, Speed Racer might do it for ya'll.



Can I just say that I really hate the cars. They look so fake. No really, how did they even get pass the editing room, they are really badly animated and poorly done.



Oh yeah, and we all know that Rain is in this and to be honest, his character served absolutely no purpose to the story what so ever. Every frame he was in was totally unnecessary. Even the whole racing sequence with him in it in the middle of the film was actually useless to the development of the plot if you think about it.God knows why they even needed to cast his character in the movie for. And by the way, his acting really blows.



So anyway, great popcorn flick.. worth checking out for the race sequences. Shut out every cheesy line and badly animated special effects.

RATING: 4/10

NicholasC

Speed Racer

The Wachowski brothers have a knack for wasting money. Under the protection of (frankly terrifying) producer-cum-human sledgehammer Joel Silver, they have, over the past ten years, taken Warner Brothers (their studio) to the cleaners for a sum I scarcely dare to think about. What have Warner Brothers been gifted with in return? Two crappyMatrix sequels and Speed Racer, the movie equivalent of a $200,000,000 bag of Skittles. I call these movies a waste of money. Evidently the board at Time Warner sees things differently. Why is that? Is it because movies don’t matter? Or is because we (the audience) are out of touch with what movies are today?

Speed Racer is based on a Japanese cartoon from the 1960s. Even if you didn’t know Speed Racer was based on a Japanese cartoon from the 1960s, you would know it instinctively: the exclamatory names (!!!); the eye-gouging colours; the general air of hysterical campiness. Our story is about a boy named Speed Racer, son of Mom and Pops Racer, brother of the deceased Rex Racer, and God-knows-what to Chim Chim, the family’s pet chimpanzee. Speed Racer lives for one thing. His arch-nemesis Royalton lives to make money (which is bad, and the standard mixed-message of every $200,000,000 movie). Everything gets settled at the race-track.

On a personal note, I take delight in any movie with a monkey in it. From Any Which Way But Loose through Dunston Checks In; movies + monkeys = a sure sign that what you’re watching ain’t going to win an Oscar any time soon.

Speed Racer is the kind of movie that can’t lose from sticking a monkey in it. It’s a bright shiny piece of crap to begin with, so (I imagine the Wachowski brothers might have said) why not stick a chimp in it too? Lord knows no-one else is going to distinguish themselves in the acting stakes. Emile Hirsch (taking his expression off a shampoo bottle and his line readings from a bar of soap) looks forgettable. Christina Ricci acts like the kind of girl a forgettable man might date. John Goodman… Oh lord. It’s all too sad. However, there’s a little boy who plays Speed’s younger brother, and, although I’m sure he’ll be a liquor-store robber in ten years, at least he seems to be enjoying himself. The chimp has a goddamn whale of a time.

Speed Racer’s real (make that: only) achievement is in the technical stakes. If Speed Racer were a ten minute short, it might almost be praise worthy for its visuals… a sky like liquid sapphire, L.A. pretty much as it is: a mirage, every race-car like chrome wind. You need a lot of purple prose to approximate what the Wachowski’s have done with pixels and an ungodly amount of money. I know, in the end, the movie tires. But for those first ten minutes, while your eyeballs are still feeling the rush, when you’re still giddy from all the colours… it’s a little like being a pre-teen again. BAM! Think of a comic book’s palette, with a comic book’s punchy, inarticulate sensibility. That’s what Speed Racer is. If you liked Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy (that makes two of us, at least) you might forgive it for not being any good.

Movies today don’t need to be good, they just need to be good at selling stuff. Off the back of Speed Racer, Time Warner hopes to sell video games, action figures, and Lord knows what else. Probably they won’t, this time around. They thought they had the next Spy Kids (I imagine), but they forgot the secret of Spy Kids success (i.e. it cost what they paid the chimp for Speed Racer). Guys like the Wachowski brothers were born to make modern Hollywood movies because all their ideas sound like great merchandizing (hell, they sold philosophy books to kids off the back of The Matrix). So let ’em waste money. They’re not alone as profligates. Roll on Lego Man: The Movie.

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Speed Racer

Visually exhilarating. If ever needed only two words to review this film, those were them. My goodness. I wasn't exactly sure why the Wachowski brothers were chosen to make this film. The Matrix trilogy was some achievement in sci-fi films but Speed Racer? A 60's Japanese cartoon would be overcooked by them, innit? I was blind but now I see. Yes, seeing is the word. The W bros gave us or rather, overfed us with some brilliance in the visuals department of this film. Without any of those breakthrough and achievement, Speed Racer would have just been another film. I cannot describe the experience in words. You really have to go watch it yourself. Emile Hirsch is in my humble opinion the correct actor to play Speed, in terms of looks, height and onscreen presence. When I flipped through the Japanese comic book, I thought that John Goodman, Susan Sarandon, Christina Ricci, Matthew Fox, the kid and the monkey were all perfectly cast to look the roles! Whenever they appear, they really bring the cartoon feel to the whole outing. I can vividly remember the fun fight scene which was so stylish and yet cartoonish and I thought hey it was hell of a great ride. Korean pop star Rain painfully learned English for his first Hollywood film and I think he did a good, not a great job overall. There are only two complaints. Firstly, the plot is too generic, very much like a lot of race-themed movies. Secondly, there were too many long family-oriented values talk going on between the characters. All in all, the Wachowski bros are cool. They are cool because they made this film not following the Hollywood formula but they made a film for themselves as their own audience. And that's cool.

Rating: 7/10

Speed Racer

I wasn’t born when the original cartoon aired, but my dad was always telling me about it. Then, MTV started playing episodes and I became familiar with Speed.
From the few episodes I’ve seen of the series, the movie captures the true spirit and remains true to original source material, something that is rare these days.
I don’t know much about Emile Hirsch, but he does a good job as Speed Racer. Christina Ricci is luscious as the lovable Trixie. John Goodman reaches back to his Roseanne days and plays an intimidating, yet understanding father. Susan Sarandon seems to fit in this world more than any other film I’ve seen her in, and hasn’t looked this good since her younger days. Paulie Litt is a dead ringer for Spritle, and has a believable rapport with Chim Chim. Roger Allam reminds me of Tim Curry, and portrays some dastardly evil deeds in this role. Matthew Fox as Racer X is spot on, but a bit underused. The rest of the cast is spectacular.
In a way similar to Cars, I have to say that if auto racing was like this, I’d be more inclined to watch it, as I’m sure would more people. The directors did a good job of creating a world that wasn’t just left turns over and over again sprinkled with some fancy devices here and there.
This film, for the most part was panned by critics because of the use of bright colors. Would someone please tell me what is wrong with having some color on the screen? Does everything have to be so dark these days? 
The colors make this film different from other movies. Now, I will say, that the race scenes can be a bit much. I’ve heard that it can cuase seizures. Especially on a big screen or in the theaters, but its still impressive.
My complaint with the film is that it is too long. If this was marketed toward a more adult audience, then the length would be fine, but fact is, this was aimed at older kids (even though they have no idea who Speed Racer is).
This is in my list of top movies for 2008. It’s got action, comedy,  deceit, a pinch of romance, and is a good story. You should check it out!

http://thankyounetflix.wordpress.com

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