Imagine someone were to replace your Ritalin with cocaine, gave you three hits of acid, and then plopped you down without warning behind the wheel of the fastest car you've ever conceived. This colorful scenario should give you a very basic idea of what the Wachowski brothers (The Matrix trilogy) have attempted to convey with their innovative adaptation of the inexplicably popular '60s cartoon Speed Racer. With race courses and backdrops taken straight out of the cartoon, put through the wash a few times with extra-brite detergent and slapped onto the screen, Speed Racer is never lacking for visual stimulation. Unfortunately, it can't always maneuver the tricky track of emotion and well-written dialogue.
Speed Racer hits the gas hard for the opening 30 minutes of the film, giving us the back story on how young Speed (Emile Hirsch) ended up as the fastest kid on the racetrack. With his supercharged Mach 5 racecar, Speed is set to be the biggest celebrity the racing world has ever seen, until he turns down a lucrative but suspiciously shady deal with racing tycoon E. P. Arnold Royalton (Roger Allam). From here on out, it's Speed against the world.
With a new hyper-drive overlap method of editing, past and present can become one. Literally. We can be in Royalton's office negotiating a deal while simultaneously flying around the bends at the latest track race. Or better yet, we can pan instantly from the cockpit of a helicopter down a car-laced mountainside, to the driver's seat of a car, all while announcers flash by like cardboard cutouts and a glaring Royalton snarls overhead. It's something like flipping quickly through the pages of a pop-up book or staring into a crowded carousel. Characters and moments in time continuously overlap, a choice that makes Speed Racer appear like the biggest budgeted second grade collage ever made. Blink and you've missed four scenes.
This style takes some getting used to, and just when your mind begins to truly grasp the story, the multi-jump cuts, the camera spins, the flashbacks and flash forwards, the Wachowskis begin to investigate Speed’s familial life and the film suddenly shifts into neutral. This is quite a frustrating development because, honestly, how much time can you give the interpersonal relationships of movie that is based upon a 1960s Japanese anime that was originally titled Mach GoGoGo? The answer is, sadly, way too much.
After watching Speed tear through the twists and turns of an impossibly curvy and brilliantly colored track, who wants to watch him navigate his own teenage angst? It's the action that whetted our appetite, not the drama. Despite any shortfalls that the film has in this department, it more than makes up for them with mind-blowing action sequences and scenarios that haven't been played out onscreen this side of, well, ever. The garish cartoonish quality of the special effects may be a bit grating at first (especially after the achingly realistic highway chase scene in The Matrix Reloaded), but the stylistic design of the Speed Racer universe begins to feel more and more like a risky experiment that paid off. The extended race scenes make this movie, much as the highway chase scene made The Matrix Reloaded. As Speed bounces through deserts, ice caves, and motorways like a ball in a tripped-out pinball machine from Hell, it's hard to look away. As Speed Racer came to a close, I was surprised at the pangs of regret I felt. I had quickly grown accustomed to the strangely vibrant world the Wachowskis had created and was positively enveloped by the fantastical, if occasionally uneven, storyline. I would have stayed in the theater for another four hours if it meant that I’d get to witness another race, another fight scene or another explosion. Good or bad, Speed Racer is just like a drug; it gets you high when it wants to, but the lulls between hits can be very, very trying.
.YES IT”S TRUE: Emile Hirsch not only guest starred on Sabrina, the Teenage Witch before he made it big, he also guest starred on 3rd Rock from the Sun, Profiler, The Pretender, NYPD Blue and ER.
Zach Freeman
