Okay, my son, The 9 Year Old Geek, and I went to see this a couple of weeks ago but with all the iPhone news, it got kinda lost in the background.
The Wachowski Brothers (The Matrix Trilogy) have not really done it again. Sorry, but the film was complete style over substance and I know it based on a cartoon and I know it was the brothers intent to put a live action cartoon on screen, but come on! Batman is based on a comic book, Iron Man is based on a comic book, Spider-Man was based on a comic book. You can make a visually stylish film and still give it deeper characters and a story to latch onto, look at Sin City, this was a stylish film that used all sorts of digital tricks but still managed to grip the audience and make sense.
Okay, rant over. I didn’t hate Speed Racer, but I was disappointed. I, as a child, watched the cartoon all the time and I was looking forward to the film. I enjoyed all of the Matrix films, I loved Bound and was blown away by their production of V for Vendetta (James McTeigue directing). Speed Racer by the Wachowski’s, what could be better, I thought. Well to answer this I would like to paraphrase Stephen Colbert when he said it was like putting all of the 4th of July fireworks in a tumble dryer and then climbing inside with them! The film is a digital cartoon that is so colorful it threatens to give you a headache and moves so fast that when they are on a race track you have no idea what is going on. When the announcer says things like, “Such and such has won, oh my god, they won!”, you go, “Oh, is that what just happened?”
My last point on this is: why do we talk down to kids? Speed Racer set out to be a kids’ film, okay, that’s fine but we don’t give kids enough credit. Speed Racer has the “funny” chimp side kick and the silly young kid who go around and offer silly comic relief whenever the filmmakers feel that they need to lighten things up. Kids don’t need this kind of shit and the parents with the kids just groan.
When Steven Spielberg released E.T. on the world in the early 80s it was a smash success. Why? Because it treated kids like everyone else. Everyone in the audience got the same experience, adults and kids alike. We can let our kids see grown up concepts without fear of scarring them for life; this is how they get prepared for the world. Kids and adults alike cried during the death scene of E.T. The only “kids” film I can think of in recent years that really dealt with an adult concept was The Bridge to Terabithia (a great film, by the way). My son and I watched this film and we both really enjoyed it. He accepted the tragedy in the film as a part of life and we moved on.
See Speed Racer at your own risk but I would say wait for DVD. With a pause button you might actually be able to make it make sense.
