slickstu

Ooh, all the pretty colours! The colour saturation is so intense it's almost enough to make one's eyes bleed! There's no doubt about it, Speed Racer looks like a cartoon come to life, indeed everything about this film is as garish as its colour palette, from it's neon-bright CGI to Susan Sarandon's faux mega rack which is almost but not quite as convincing as that sported by Ms. Lara Croft.

The film runs solely on primitive emotions consisting of all the tawdry clichés such as love, hate, greed, jealousy etc and the histrionics are never allowed to mix - a strict quota of one emotion per character at any one time applies. Subtlety is not in this films vocabulary but this is a kids movie so it can be excused for keeping it's themes simple and its characters firmly black or white (or rather a gaudy red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo or violet as is more likely the case here.)

But as a kiddies movie it also frequently strays from the mark. Writer/directors, Andy and Larry Wachowski, spend far too much time mapping out the detail of a corporate subplot involving white collar crime and company takeovers, a narrative which is completely incongruous with its target audience. The film also periodically yawns with gratuitous sentimentality which will drive its young viewers towards more interesting endeavours such as searching for that lost lolly under their seat.

Speed Racer, however, comes alive with its high octane race sequences which will no doubt segue seamlessly with inevitable video game tie-ins. As spectacular as its CGI is, though, it's also very unrealistic. The cars look like bars of soap sliding around a bath tub. There's no sensation of friction; the vehicles don't even look like they're attempting to be real cars with tyres pulling traction on real roads. Although it's somewhat fitting that a cheap cartoon would spawn correspondingly cheap CGI, the albeit exhilarating race sequences consequently miss the opportunity to be truly awesome.

It's ultimately a vacuous experience, the dialogue is predominantly daft and its running time is about one race too long, but for all that there's still enough entertainment value in its spectacularly staged race sequences to maintain sufficient interest and to deem it unworthy of the "megaflop" mantle it has been burdened with.

6.5 out of 10

Decapper

Go when its about half way through as thats when its starts to become watchable. or take a pair of homer glasses

Pokedad

My tip for this movie is, sit near the back on the cinema. THere is SO MUCH going on colour and movement wise, if your close the front your screwed, I moved back about 5 rows during the film and was glad I did.

It's enjoyable though, good for the little people.