Stop! Speed Racer Stop!

The opening moments of Speed Racer take the viewer back a decade to when the Wachowski brothers reinvented the action genre with The Matrix. The boldness of the film’s aesthetic (which places real actors into a CG universe instead of the other way around) has instant appeal akin to Neo’s slo-mo kung-fu. About twenty minutes into the movie, the viewer is reminded that the Wachowski’s directed The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions. Their inability to tell a story ruined those films and that same lack of skill is on display in Speed Racer as well.

Here’s the trouble, and some aficionados may be crushed by this, Speed Racer is not very good source material. The cartoon holds up only as a piece of camp that is probably much more enjoyable if viewed high on weed. A high energy/ high irony movie version could have worked, though the weed might still need to be employed. This film is played so straight that there is no tongue in cheek fun to be had. Instead you have characters that are 2-D thin begging to be taken seriously. The script is unimaginative (if you miss any of the half dozen inspirational speeches that Speed Racer receives do not fear, they are all replayed again at the climax) and it doesn’t look like anyone is having any fun.

Because the film clearly hinges on its visual effects, let’s examine them in more detail. The car chase is a Hollywood staple because it comes with built in suspense. The scenes where the Mach Five barrels around the track, however, have all of the excitement of watching someone else play video games. Once Speed finds himself in an off road rally the excitement does pick up a bit but the movie will probably only succeed in making viewers want to play Mario Kart. It has been well publicized that this film cost $200 million to make, however, some of the computer rendering doesn’t look much better than what Robert Rodriguez does for his Spy Kids movies for a fraction of the cost.

As far as the performances go, Christina Ricci (as Speed’s girlfriend) and John Goodman (as Pops Racer) are the most watchable. They also come closest to taking the film over the top, which is where it desperately needed to go. Emile Hirsch’s earnestness looks ridiculous against his Technicolor racing suit and CG car. Paulie Litt does a good job of recreating the character of Spritle Racer; Spritle, it should be noted, is obnoxious in the cartoon and thus is equally obnoxious in the movie.

Speed Racer does hold some thrills (there is some solid martial arts fun about an hour in) and a couple of laughs, all of which receive an amplified response from a joy deprived audience. But it is clear that the Wachowski’s have gone the way of George Lucas; obsessed with new technology at the expense of actual storytelling. Sure The Matrix (or Star Wars) was chock full of spectacular effects but it also had an intriguing story and characters to become invested in. What their subsequent films (just like the three Star Wars prequels) have shown is that all of the spectacle in the world cannot make up for the lack of solid narrative.