I love roller coasters. I can read in the back seat of a moving vehicle while sitting backwards. I don’t get sea-sick. I can ride any theme park spin ride without any inclination of vomiting. About two hours into this movie when the little boy was cheering “go, Speed, go,” I was thinking “for the love of all that’s holy, please stop!” No film since the Blair Witch Project has provided the nauseating visuals to turn my stomach like Speed Racer.

Speed Racer (Emile Hirsch) is a gifted driver haunted by the death of his older brother. He manages to make an enemy of a large corporation which brings hardship to his family. In an effort to set things right, he competes in a series of races to beat out the corporate-sponsored racers thus denting the pockets of overly greedy companies.

Before getting into what’s wrong with this film, let’s go over what’s right.

The casting was great even if some of the actors didn’t play up the parts well enough. Matthew Fox was a perfect Racer X and Christina Ricci couldn’t be more suited to play Trixie as she looks like a living cartoon anyway.

While I have issues with some of the film style, some of the scenes were brilliantly edited. Unfortunately these were in the minority in a movie that is so segmented and jumbled that you lose track of what’s happening in the story.

Mach 5 was the star of this film. Computer-generated it may have been but some of the action sequences with that car were amazing and ingenious.

Considering the story, the positive messages about the importance of family, the quality of competition and the vilification of greed are great things to see in a movie these days even if those themes were repeated a bit much.

Now on to the more unpleasant aspects where the The Wachowski Brothers let me down. I appreciate what they’re trying to do but they tried way too hard.

This film is incredibly difficult to access visually. The colors are so saturated that your eyes are exhausted after the first twenty minutes. Things move so fast and are eye-jarring that nausea is nearly unavoidable. In some scenes there is bizarre timing with the foreground, green-screened image moving at a different frame rate as the background creating this oddly unnatural sense of time.

Some of the characters were just way too typical and possibly insulting. Bribing the Mongolian racers with furs? The Middle-Eastern racers using cobras as weapons? Not cool and not very inventive.

There were even gangsters shooting tommy guns about to literally feed someone to the fishes and for a moment I thought I was watching the Dick Tracy flop from the early ’90s. What was their role in this story anyway? I can’t even remember.

For a film with a pretty simple story it was way too long. Normally I’m not one to complain as I like to get my $9 worth but this one isn’t worth 2 hours 15 minutes. Cut out all of the very unnecessary frills and edit it down to about 1 hour 40 minutes and they might be onto something here. Until then, I’ll take the animated Speed Racer over this one any day.

Verdict | NOT

i’ve read mixed reviews about the new indy.
i have such an affinity for the old ones, this one will probably knock my socks off - just cuz.

shia labeouf is badass. seriously. good call on that one. he was even badass in holes. you go, guy-with-the-cool-name.

did anyone see the battle of shaker heights?

Thanks for the kind words Chunk. Check out my review of the next Narnia. I’d be interested in your opinion…

and yes… much agreed. Go see Iron Man instead (unless Crystal Skull turns out to be sweet this weekend!)!

Right on D-man.  This film sucked.  If you haven’t seen it, don’t.  Go see Iron Man again instead!