Speed Racer (2008)

From the creators of the Matrix comes a world built for Speed. And mushrooms or high grade LSD. The Wachowski Brothers are back and this time they've stripped off their S&M leathers, painted their cocks with glowing primary colours and they're gonna fuck your eye holes. Two flashing, fizzing, fat neon cocks relentlessly ramming the windows to your soul for two hours and ten minutes. Still, no matter how desperately they both grip your head, cycle through strobe settings and furiously pump away, Speed Racer has all the emotional charge of a dialling tone.

A lot has been said about the way this movie looks. That until now this couldn't have been made or that you've never seen anything like it before. This is the sort of wild studio based statement that reminds me of when Matrix Reloaded was coming out. Producer Joel Silver said "We've raised the bar so high that there is no bar". Sadly the results looked like a rushed xbox game with a script from an Atari game and a plot from drunken game of consequences.

As far as the race sequences go I'll admit that they are fantastic. There is an avalanche of creativity on screen, explosions of new techniques, multicoloured manga made real, genuinely mind blowing visual flair and innovation. But when Speed takes his foot off the pedal it's not just the car that stops dead. The bits inbetween look like Dick Tracy with sub-Phantom Menace acting. It's a 100 million dollar remake of Flash Gordon by a Vulcan.


I didn't care about Rex, I didn't care about Mom and Pops, I definitely didn't care about Spritle and fucking Chim-Chim. I didn't care if Speed won or lost. I didn't even care if Speed lived or died. About three quarters of the way through I started to stop caring if I lived or died.

Even Christina Ricci can't save it. Everyone plays their part well but somehow their dodgy lines fall flat, never stepping out of the green screened soundstage and into the cartoon world the races occupy. Much like Phantom Menace at first glance the movie seems to have all the ingredients for adrenaline fuelled action and adventure. But they soon make the same mistakes. No-one wants to see a sci-fi adventure movie that revolves around a trade embargo, and, no-one wants to see a racing movie that revolves around a complicated plot to drive up stock prices.

The races themselves soon become repetitive, another spinning car, another upside down shot. The so called car-fu that has been made so much of was so-so but in the grand scheme of things it added nothing - the movie lacked heart and no amount of upside down, spinning, back-flipping cgi cars could replace that.


When I saw it on a Saturday night the cinema was empty except for five people. Which is probably a good indication of how popular this flickering kaleidoscopic turd is going to be. You could always say that really this is for kids, I don't agree. There was a kid sitting behind us during the showing and he didn't get it at all.

Every ten seconds he would ask who or what was on screen and why it was happening. If the sound was louder i.e. during a race he would ask repeatedly, each time increasing in volume. Who is that? Where is he going? Has he crashed? Why has he crashed? Will he get an ambulance? WILL HE GET AN AMBULANCE? WILL HE GET AN AMBULANCE?

Despite the fact that Pops was in the movie from the start - about an hour and forty-five minutes in he bellowed 'Is that his Dad?' 

At one point Speed Racer was talking to an ex-Grand Prix winner who was black. The kid shouted 'Is that his brother?'


Maybe this spastic child has coloured my view of Speed Racer, but, question-tourettes-kid or not this was a shit movie. One reviewer called it 'a hit and run with a box of Crayola' another 'the cgi equivalent of a bukkake movie'. You'll definitely be wiping the cgi spunk off your face for weeks afterwards but you'll have forgotten why it's there before you stand-up.

Incidentally after putting up with it for over an hour we asked the Dad to try and control his kid, repeatedly. Forty-five minutes and numerous inane questions later after hearing him say "When does it finish?' and the Dad say 'Yeah it's boring innit?' I turned round and told him to 'Shut the fuck up because I can't hear the fucking film' to which he replied 'It's a kids film' to which I replied 'Mate, your fucking kid isn't enjoying it and he hasn't had a fucking clue what has happened from start to finish, so why don't you fuck off' to which he just shrugged.

Problem is they're right, Speed Racer is boring and you do wonder when it will finish. For an adaptation of a cartoon about race cars that has to be a major fuck up. If you asked me why I watched the whole thing I'd probably shrug too.