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'Speed Racer" runs for a gluteus-deadening 2 hours and 9 minutes. Episodes of the TV cartoon that inspired it ran for only 22 minutes. And that was too long.
The movie version, the first film to be directed by Andy and Larry Wachowski since "The Matrix Revolutions," is an underpopulated, uncompelling and grotesquely overlong piece of eye candy geared to a sixth-grader's world view.
In the film's opening moments, we are treated to a back story that describes the car-obsessed childhood of young Speed, who worships older brother Rex (Scott Porter), flirts with classmate Trixie and has a wholesome relationship with his car-building Pops (John Goodman) and doting Mom (Susan Sarandon).
The childhood stuff is actually effective, particularly when little Speed (he appears to have ADD) uses his classroom time to imagine he's driving in the Grand Prix.
Our involvement in the story idles, however, when the films shifts gears to the grown-up Speed (Emile Hirsch), a reckless pedal-to-the-metalhead determined to drive fast and win big for the sake of dear departed Rex, who broke with the family and died after plowing into a mountain during a cross-country race.
There are other plot threads: Automotive magnate Royalton (Roger Allam) is impressed by Speed's style, but Royalton's crass commercialism goes against everything the anti-corporate Racer family stands for. Speed is covertly recruited by a government agent improbably named Inspector Detector (Benno Furmann).
"Lost" star Matthew Fox escapes from the island long enough to make an appearance as the masked and mysterious Racer X, and somehow ninja assassins become involved, along with Japanese car builders and various unscrupulous drivers.
When it's moving -- when Speed is zapping his car around a track resembling the innards of a gigantic pinball machine -- the film offers the sort of overblown visual distraction today's kids revel in. But "Speed Racer" doesn't even really get that right, sacrificing action for long passages of momentum-killing exposition.
About the only area in which "Speed Racer" excels is in its look, a visual cacophony of day-glo colors, '60s retro kitsch and computer-rendered cars whose gleaming bodies reflect their surroundings.
The competitions are more like bumper car rides or demolition derbies, with participants ramming each other, or nudging other drivers off cliffs. The vehicles are outfitted with presumably illegal grappling hooks, tire-shredding blades and pumps that spew oil in the path of pursuing drivers. Speed's machine can spring vertically into the air to avoid collisions.
The Wachowskis provide neither structure nor attitude, and they miss numerous opportunities for humor, relying mostly on the unremarkable hijinks of Speed's candy-scarfing kid brother Spritle (Paulie Litt) and his pet chimpanzee. The monkey, frankly, gives the film's best performance. At least it exhibits more life and better comic timing than the narcoleptic Goodman, the over-the-top cast of villains or the generic Hirsch.
Christina Ricci is largely wasted as the grownup Trixie. The only suspense in the film comes from us wondering when she and Speed will actually lock lips. When they finally do, we get a cootie joke. Har.
D
Speed Racer
Directors: Andy and Larry Wachowski
Cast: Emile Hirsch, John Goodman, Christina Ricci, Susan Sarandon
Running time: 2 hrs., 9 min.
Rated: PG for sequences of action, some violence, language and brief smoking
Location: Opens Friday at theaters everywhere |
