"Speed Racer" Is Quite the Acid Trip

Note: This review was originally posted in 2008, during the initial theatrical release of the film. With the exception of correcting some spelling errors and updating the Wachowskis’ current preferred identity, the review remains unchanged as written 18 years ago.

Okay folks, this one’s going to be a doozy; let’s talk about “Speed Racer,” the new film based on the '60s anime, which is being directed by the Wachowskis (of “The Matrix” fame). This is going to be a tough one because this movie walks a very fine line between “high-octane fun” and “pretty crap.” I mean that in a good way. If you’ve ever seen the Speed Racer cartoon, you may have an image of poorly animated races with poorly dubbed dialogue in your mind. You may also have in mind that the cartoon was about a kid who was a race car driver, his family who were mechanics, and their pet monkey, Chim-Chim. Well, take that image and imagine it as a live-action movie, and the movie would pretty much look as you imagined it would.

Well, except for the fact that the movie is animated better. The story... well, the story doesn’t matter, really. It’s about how Speed (Emile Hirsch), distraught over how his brother, Rex (Scott Porter), died in a race several years earlier, has now become a top-notch racer in his own right and now faces having to deal with sponsors. A sponsor makes a deal with Speed, but feeling that having a sponsor would betray how he feels about the sport, he turns it down. The sponsor warns Speed that every race, including the Grand Prix races, has been fixed because the point of racing is to make stock prices go up. Or, you know, something like that. Anyway, like I said, all this is pretty much no big deal.

The only time the story itself takes off—where the story emotionally involves the viewer—is during the scenes where the family discusses the impact Rex’s death had on the whole family. Most particularly, this is where Pops (played excellently by John Goodman) provides the movie with its most emotional scene. Eh, but what am I talking about? Kids won’t care about Rex’s death. They won’t care about Speed’s issues with sponsorship, they won’t care about his relationship with girlfriend Trixie (Christina Ricci, making her first family film in years), or the fact that Susan Sarandon is getting so few roles that she has to settle for making “Speed Racer.” Nah, I’m sure the kids will care most about the car races—where Speed races in ice caverns, over volcanoes, and on these race track loops that look like they were built to KILL people!

The movie is all at once colorful, loud, and frenetic. Many swirling colors shaded my view after this film was over. It’s pure cotton candy, and the Wachowskis prove that they are visual masters regardless of what color palette they decide to use. Yet the film also tends to provide a bit too much sugar at times, as the movie is almost non-stop insanity that goes on for more than two hours. It’s enough to make you wish it would slow down, and when it does slow down, you wish it would start back up again. Those who see this film in IMAX would be wise to bring a barf bag. Visuals and story aside, though, I’m going to go out on a limb and say the movie's greatest strength is that it takes itself seriously and doesn’t go for any inside jokes.

Once you start making inside jokes, the movie starts to steer towards being camp, but “Speed Racer” takes its material seriously enough so that you never get this feeling that the actors are winking at the camera. It feels really odd knowing how (at least fundamentally) stupid this film really is. Still, though, the directors are clearly fans of the work, the actors seem to have fun with their roles, and therefore, I had fun at this movie. And I know I’m going to regret saying this in the morning, but I really do love that monkey.