I have to admit that now and again I’ll indulge and see a kid’s movie. Just recently, I was super duper impressed by Ratatouille, an animated film so intricately thought out that even the most serious adult viewer would identify with its mature humor and modern political parallels. The action in Ratatouille was tight, the dialogue specific. I was glued to my couch like a regular Netflix potato. But for Speed Racer, adults in the audience needed a jolt of espresso at intermission. Wait…no. Nope, I’m recalling now…that’s right: there was no intermission. Sucker!
Still the fact remains that Speed Racer entertained me. It did, a bit. I must credit the Art Direction first and foremost, and David Tattersall nailed the cinematography. Camera close-ups on characters’ faces lent a comic book aesthetic to the scene work. And the stunts, sounds, and visual effects revved up the world of the anime series to lightening-speed-life, with brazen colors and flashy kicks and tricks by cars, in mid-track and in mid-air. The cast was a cast of giants, including Emile Hirsch, Susan Sarandon, John Goodman, Christina Ricci, and Matthew Fox, among many fabulous others. So I needn’t say the actors were well-tuned and oiled for this race. I drove home wishing the LA streets were a race course free of cops! So where did Speed Racer go wrong?
Andy and Larry Wachowski (the minds behind the Matrix) wrote and directed this monster script, so I wonder, didn’t a third party have any power of censorship? And why, dear god, why?! didn’t they exercise it? The script is so polluted with detail and excessive dialogue that the movie spanned a nauseating… 2 hours and 15 mins? I’m sorry—I just looked that up—I’m surprised. I thought it had to have been at least 3 and a half hours long. Mama Sarandon’s words of wisdom encouraged her son Speed to follow his heart, because his racing skills were “beautiful, like a work of art, inspiring.” Well, the film might have been beautiful, like opening up a bag of Skittles I guess, but you know I’m thinking “inspiring” is not the word. Every turn of events and moral lesson was relentlessly rehashed so as not to confuse any poor lost soul who couldn’t keep up with the plot. Repetition may help out the young ones, but sadly, Speed Racer was no occasion for my pigtails.
Check out details, showtimes, etc. at:
http://speedracerthemovie.warnerbros.com/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0811080/
Silly rabbit, Speed Racer's for Kids by http://thewordofna.blogspot.com/ is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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