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Friday, May 9, 2008
No, Speed Racer, no!
Speed Racer is a great, big beautiful contraption of a movie - that has a maddening habit of breaking down repeatedly. It has the body of a Ferrari, but the engine of a Pinto.
Some people will love this movie; others will hate it. I loved it and hated it. I loved it for its dazzling design and effects, and I hated it for wasting all that innovation on a threadbare story.
I knew Speed Racer would be a movie of extremes, but the extremes cut both ways. What works in the movie is very good, but what fails in the movie is often very bad. The Wachowski brothers, the creators of the Matrix trilogy, have written and directed a Frankenstein monster of a film that’s only half alive.
Unsurprisingly, the Wachowskis have made a technical marvel. The art direction looks like a Roman candle factory gone haywire, but in a good way. If nothing else, this just might be the most colorful movie ever made. Rather than being blinding, the movie is eye-filling. There’s something wild to see on almost every inch of the screen.
Even more impressive is the editing style, which seamlessly segues from shot to shot, creating brilliant collages of imagery. This is as much a revolution for digital editing as JFK was for cutting on film. Early on, when young Speed imagines himself in a race, and every object in the scene except him is a pencil drawing, I smiled and said “wow” out loud. I thought I was in for a great ride.
Then the story had to intrude, and the caution flags went flying.
What the screenplay does get right are the heroes. Speed (Emile Hirsch), his girlfriend Trixie (Christina Ricci) and his mom and pop (Susan Sarandon and John Goodman) are all very charming. Even the brash little brother Spritle (Paulie Litt) and his chimp, who would have thrown a wrench into other movies, have some inspired moments.
The same cannot be said of the villains, a rogues gallery of goons who aren’t all that menacing. They wanted Speed to race for their big corporation, but Speed and his family aren’t in it for the money, so naturally, they must be destroyed. The story wants to be a parable against greed, but when it moves away from Speed’s family, the film’s energy sags badly. Kids will like all the pretty colors and the action, but many of them will be bored when they talk about money and contracts and corruption and all that stuff.
And that feeds into another problem with Speed Racer - it is far, far, too long, especially for a movie designed for kids. This two hour and 15 minute film could stand to be a half hour shorter at the very least.
Then, when the movie does speed up, sometimes it spins out of control. While all the races have clever moments, the Wachowskis and their editors have cut them too fast, making the action hard to follow - and that’s a fatal mistake when the racing scenes are your bread and butter.
If the racing scenes don’t work as well as they should, then a movie called Speed Racer can’t either, no matter how much technical wizardry is on display.
GRADE: C
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