Speed Racer I knew it was going to happen. I just knew it. As the closing credits of the new Speed Racer ran the lady next to me started singing "Go Speed Racer, Go Speed Racer, Go Speed Racer, GOOOOOOO". This is a movie by way of Peter Max and Andy Warhol. This is one bright little sucker. All of the colors are cranked up to an eleven (with a nod to Spinal Tap). There is a great scene where Speed is in the middle of a race, and as he drives across the screen from right to left, the camera shooting down on him from up in the air, the road swirls into circles of color behind him. It is a really great shot but if you blink you might miss it. I think it was the best scene in the whole movie, and for the next best one I would have to think a minute.
Speed Racer started as off as a manga back in the 60s and then into the TV series, Mach GoGoGo in Japan and Speed Racer in the US. Speed Racer was inspired by the movies Goldfinger (the Aston Martin) and Viva Las Vegas (Elvis" look). They handed out Speed Racer posters as prizes at the showing I attended, and that was one of the trivia questions (no one got that question right but someone did guess Spinout, not a bad guess). From the printed page to TV, it has now inspired a really boring movie (oh God was this boring). From an editing point of view it was interesting to watch, but it wasn"t all together successful. A lot of the time we see floating heads, cutting back and forth across the screen, to make plot points. They serve the same duty that multiple windows within the frame might have done otherwise (like the kind that are used in Woodstock). But these floating heads are very annoying, and they are used throughout the whole movie.
 The movie is fine for kids, and it seems to have been written with a five year old in mind, though the movie is not devoid of some nice touches and a few surprises. But you can make a movie that appeals to adults and kids (Dumbo or Toy Story) I think one problem is that Speed is just too boring a lead character to carry a 129 minute movie. He is so damn nice.
Do you need to know about the plot? The movie is called Speed Racer, what do you think the plot is about?
The movie lost me at about 20 or 30 minutes in. It was just boring aside from a joke here and there. I enjoyed watching John Goodman as Pops and Christina Ricci as Trixie, who has a nice day glow look about her , but she is kept on a short leash and isn"t given much to do. Susan Sarandon was smokin" hot as Speed"s mom, but alas her heads just floats across the screen as she babbles about this or that. Spritle and Chim Chim are annoying, though some of the best lines in the movie are given to Spritle.
 The movie has a real "Hey Gang, look what we can do with a computer" kind of look. The racing scenes go by fast and I wish they had slowed them down some. They go by so fast sometimes they don"t make any real impact. Just making a scene go faster doesn"t mean it is any better (maybe I am just getting old and cranky). You have to be able to read the scene. Think of Terminator 2, there isn"t hardly an action scene in there that you can"t read well. I thought the editing was one of the more interesting parts of the movie, but I didn"t like some of the choices they made. At least they did try some new stuff and sometimes they tried several different techniques, one right after the other. Speed Racer is eye candy to the max (that is about all it is), and if you like that sort of thing then you may want to see this. I noticed that Iron Man and Speed Racer, as well as the upcoming Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, had special effects done by Industrial Light and Magic. I think Industrial Light is the one that is going to have a great summer, though I am looking forward to Batman and the new Mike Myers movie. "Go Speed Racer", ahhhhhh nuts.
You can write to James Harper at movielover77061@yahoo.com |
