Speed Racer: Review

Oh God this post is super late. So anyway, went to watch Speed Racer. Was really psyched. It's done by the Wachowski brothers, the same dudes who gave me my favorite film of all time, The Matrix. And I like Speed Racer. I used to watch it every Saturday morning on NTV7. I enjoyed the film, but it was really bad.

The movie is about 18 year old Speed Racer played by Emile Hirsch who's life revolves around race car driving. He gets a big break to sign on with a huge racing company but turns it down to stay with his family. Speed also uncovers a secret that top corporate interests, including Royalton, are fixing races and cheating to gain profit. With the offer to Speed denied, Royalton wants to ensure that Speed will not win races. Speed finds support from his parents and his girlfriend Trixie and enters The Crucible in a partnership with his one-time rival, Racer X, seeking to rescue his family's business and the racing sport itself.

I did like that Speed Racer stayed true to it's original cartoon form. The visuals are so over the top in this. It's all flashy, so fluid like and kind of fake. I felt like I was having an epileptic seizure watching Speed Racer. It's great they paid homage to the anime series but they should have toned it down just a bit for the film. It looked really out of place, you know what I mean?

But what's great, and I mean great, are the race scenes. They were incredibly breakneck fast-paced action set pieces and just one after another the race sequences gets even more intense. Though I did feel the car gadgets like that jumping thing was slightly odd, I liked the racing. So any of ya'll looking for some adrenaline pumping goodness, Speed Racer might do it for ya'll.

Can I just say that I really hate the cars. They look so fake. No really, how did they even get pass the editing room, they are really badly animated and poorly done.

Oh yeah, and we all know that Rain is in this and to be honest, his character served absolutely no purpose to the story what so ever. Every frame he was in was totally unnecessary. Even the whole racing sequence with him in it in the middle of the film was actually useless to the development of the plot if you think about it.God knows why they even needed to cast his character in the movie for. And by the way, his acting really blows.

So anyway, great popcorn flick.. worth checking out for the race sequences. Shut out every cheesy line and badly animated special effects.

RATING: 4/10