Speed Racer (2008)

I had no particular stake in the Speed Racer movie, while my little sister was a committed fan for a period of months in the mid 1990's when the series ran on Cartoon Network, what little I saw of it I wasn’t impressed with, and I even teased my sister about the program. Yet for some reason when it failed at the box office on opening weekend I was a little disappointed. Maybe that’s because I figured the film would do well, given the hype, the intended demographic, and the success of the directors the Wachowski brother’s (or brother and sister now, so I hear). Again this is ironic because my thinking the film would succeed wasn’t exactly a tribute to its intended audience, and I’ve always been kind of luke warm to the Wachowski’s, finding the first two Matrix’s to be good enough, but V For Vendetta rather off-putting. Anyway with my day off on Tuesday, a rather sizable chunk of afternoon clear, and little else in the theater yet that I wanted to see, I spent the staggering sum of $12.50 on an IMAX showing, figuring if I was going to see it, might as well see it right.

The production design was the first thing that attracted me to the movie, I knew it was going to look great. Then a posting on Sergio Leoni and the Infield Fly Rule, defending the flick against the critics onslaught against it, made me kind of want to be one of its defenders. Though it felt like it dragged some in the middle, after the novelty wore off and prior to the payoff (which was more fulfilling then I had expected), I liked the film. One of my major problems with the Wachowski’s previous work was what I take to be its pretentiousness, they make action films with a little material from a freshman philosophy course thrown in, and countless young people find them to be some of the most deep and profound films they have ever experienced. Having actually experienced deep and profound films, I find these bastardized versions a little infuriating. However in Speed Racer the Wachowski’s were simply making a cartoon into as cartoon like of a movie as they could, and generally having fun with it. The films messages about anti-corporatism and family where measured enough, and well integrated into the plot enough, that I didn’t mind them, I even approved. The casting decisions were all right on, with lead Emile Hirsch sufficiently ‘generic handsome and uncomplicated’, and Cristina Ricci, John Goodman, and (the can she really be in her 60's and look like that?) Susan Sarandon perfectly fitted to their roles. Mention must also go to the actor who played the little boy, who completely got the character and hammed it up supremely. All this being said the film comes out as a solid, fun 3 out of five, and I most assuredly would like to play the video game version.