Speed Racer 2008 Review

Wachowski's movie crashes and burns.

SPEED RACER is  fast paced, its got really bright colors, but at 2 hours and 15 minutes it's at least an hour too long. The makers of the Matrix set their eye on a family adaptation of the popular cartoon series and deliver an over-long waste of time energy and resources that few will enjoy.

You know this movie is based on the Japanese cartoon that was dubbed and re-edited for American television in the 1960s, right?   It's faithful to the series in several ways (characters, a very cartoonish look and feel).  Unfortunately the script stinks.   Capable actors have been cast, and a well used monkey plays the part well.  The look of the film is sharp, and clear, and colorful.

You might be so entranced with the look of this film that for 30 minutes of so.. you might not notice there's only about 5 minutes worth of plot,  and Emile Hirsch (Into the Wild), Christina Ricci, Susan Sarandon and John Goodman are utterly wasted.

Then, even those of you who were looking for brainless action will realize you're watching nothing more than a well produced video game.  It's bright and colorful... but someone else is playing this game and you are just stuck watching it.  It's all CGI and animated effects with human actors added into the mix.  The SFX work is very good, the color  bright and almost dayglo.

For young kids, at about 75 minutes this might have worked very nicely, but at 135 minutes it is way way too long and I don't think too many parents will be able to hold on.     You would be far better watching Pixar's Cars (2006) or even a couple of episodes of the original series.

The movie gives us a little history of the character...  Speed Racer grows up not very interested in school but in the family racing business.   When his older brother Rex dies in a mysterious car crash, Speed follows in his footstep with the support of his parents and with help from the monkey.  The monkey is never explained.

Speed doesn't accept a very lucrative sponsorship deal from a big corporate conglomerate (and turn his back on his family's business) so the Royalton Industries owner (Roger Allam) makes it his mission to ruin Speed's career.  It looks like he will too .. which leads us to the cross country rally... the same one that took Speed's brothers' life.  Speed teams up with Racer X (Mathew Fox) to expose just how corrupt  Royalton Industries is. 

I was utterly bored after twenty minutes.. the quick cutting CGI effects, are colorful but how about interesting characters, snappy dialogue, interesting plot twists? 

You won't be saying  Go Speed Racer Go.... But rather... End Speed Racer End...  end this movie already.