"Speed Racer" (2008)
Directed by the Wachowski Brothers
Directed by the Wachowski Brothers
Speed Racer follows a family of car racers who live in a strange, futuristic world. There is the naively optimistic Speed Racer (a boring Emile Hirsch), Pops Racer (a serviceable John Goodman, who somewhat resembles Mario), Mom Racer (a serviceable Susan Sarandon), and Speed's son, Young Speed (Nicholas Elia), who is easily the most annoying character I have had to witness in recent memory. We would expect Speed Racer, with its blinding, colorful visuals and numerous digital backdrops, to be a visually brilliant showcase of its characters' passion for an intense form of racing. Instead, the Wachowski Brothers manage to suck the life and joy out of the potentially fascinating world they have created.On top of the horrendous line delivery and acting - that it would somehow be "appropriate" for this strange world is out of the question - the film is astoundingly mean-spirited. Speed Racer, representing the self-reliant individual, is put up against Royalton (a boring Roger Allam), the CEO of a conglomeration that manages many racers. But the film focuses so much on the negativity of their competition - during a negotiation, Royalton lectures incessantly about how Speed's belief in the "art" of racing is all just a hopeless dream - that it simply grows wearisome and depressing. In a fighting sequence that takes place on the road, a gang member's tank of piranhas is shot up and the leader forces one of his henchmen to put his finger in the hole; we see the man's body convulse and the tank fill with blood as his finger is shredded, all in the middle of what should be an exciting action sequence. The Wachowskis' failure to make any of these characters interesting, or the digital world they inhabit engaging, leaves the overwhelming cynicism that pervades this film feeling all the more unwarranted.
Rating: 1
First Viewed: 5/29/08
3 comments:
I'm surprised you went to see this. ....but of course! You were FORCED to see it.... oh poor poor Max. I figured they'd screw it up. And here I was thinking that nothing could make it worse than the USA slash-and-burn edited version of Speed Racer I grew up on. That was my first anime :)
But yeah, I think when you have 2 nerds that strike it rich..... "Hey....we've got tons of money. Let's make another movie. "D00d let's make a speed racer movie! that cartoon was sweeet! We can pay for all the CGI!" etc.
Hey it's how Transformers got made.
Heh, but Transformers was kind of a guilty pleasure... (6/10)
My friend and I both left the theater after an hour of the film. It was ridiculous.
The movie is a flop. I'm starting to doubt that the Wachowski's have any real talent, and that the first Matrix movie was really a bunch of stolen ideas from talented people.
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