Speed Racer

Starring: Emile Hirsch, Christina Ricci, Matthew Fox, John Goodman, Susan Sarandon

IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0811080/

This review contains minor spoilers.

I saw this movie mostly for the visual effects, I’m going to put that out front since I was not really excited about the plot, actors, or the nostalgia. This movie did extremely poorly in the reviews, with critics having very little good to say about it. I can understand where they are coming from, the movie is not very critic friendly. The plot is only passable, the acting was nothing special and apart from the racing scenes the movie is severely lacking in substance. On the other hand, what did they expect? This is a movie that is all about the racing. It was made mostly with the visuals in mind, over more traditional elements and being a children’s movie especially makes that point even more necessary.

The visuals, being the main drawing point, are phenomenal. There were scenes that looked like they jumped straight out of a cartoon or anime and oddly the regular 3D actors did not look at all out of place. The race scenes were full of flashy effects, both 3D and 2D, but even a lot of the ordinary scenes really pushed the visuals. This movie has done what many have tried and none have succeeded at before, they made a completely believable live action cartoon. The visual style alone would be worth the admission price, unfortunately for most people, however, is that this is the only thing worth the price.
One thing I found amusing was that for a movie that is being lauded as an extremely wholesome family film, they are surprisingly nonchalant about violence. Sure racers who crash are bounced to safety in giant bubbles, an obvious attempt at softening the violence for young viewers, but then we have a scene where a goons finger is eaten off his hand by a tank of piranhas. Then worst of all – and some may constitute this a major spoiler but since it is practically thrown down your throats (to make it easier to figure out for the youngins i suppose) I don’t really believe it’s movie killing – we as viewers are lead to believe that “Racer X” is indeed Speed Racer’s long thought dead brother. Yet they found the charred remains of a body at the crash site, so were this to be true then Rex Racer, in order to fake his own death, found some random body (either already dead or not yet…) and proceeded to blow up his car with the body inside. Is this what we’re teaching our kids? That murder is fine as long as you do it for a good cause like faking your own death to follow a life of crime fighting?

Questionable morals aside, the movie definetly had it’s share of redeemable qualities. The casting (not necessarily the acting since I think the lack of quality there was more attributable to the writing) was great, with my only problems being with the young versions of Speed and Trixie (punch scene aside since her face was hilarious). Christina Ricci was good, Emile Hirsch was definetly well cast for the part but he didn’t really get a chance to show off his chops, and the younger brother, while sometimes too over the top, was a great addition.

The stunts, which I guess could have been included above when I talked about visuals, were extremely cool and while completely ridiculous they made total sense in context. It was a good example of fantastical things seeming realistic because of the rules set by the story’s universe.

I definetly enjoyed the movie, if mainly just for the visual style and effects. Any child would most likely have a great time watching this movie and I would even recommend it to those adults who can just sit back and enjoy the ride. A ride which was definetly full of eye candy and slightly exhausting in a good way, albeit perhaps 15 minutes too long.

~ by Hobbes on May 12, 2008.