Speed Racer

by Spencer Michlin

If I were a 10-year-old boy, Speed Racer might well be my favorite movie.  That’s the age when a kid’s most open to the film’s constant shifts of reality and perspective.  Or maybe it’s simply the period when a boy most loves flat out nonstop action--certainly true for the ones cheering at the screening I attended.

By any standard, this visually stunning film keeps things moving.  Its universe and frame of reference ever-changing, Speed Racer constantly switches lanes from era to era, style to style.  Mind blowing green screen effects in super-saturated colors lap live action, then draft behind old-fashioned Saturday morning animation.  After spinning into a martial arts encounter or two, the action takes a pit stop at a family home straight out of a 50’s sitcom, then barrelasses right back onto the c.g. track.

All the while, on the surface and below, runs an anti-capitalist current stronger than anything in There Will Be Blood.  Corporate bad guys are a staple of comic books and adventure movies, but Roger Allam’s Royalton--kind of an amalgam of Donald Trump and Simon Cowell but even nastier (anything’s possible in the movies!)—is one for the ages.   Although Royalton makes a wonderful villain, I wonder if kids won’t be left with a light residue of Trotskyite resentment.  Then again, this is hardly an occasion for overthinking; besides, kids read and see stories of evil kings all the time without becoming anti-royalists.

The film’s looks (it has many, courtesy of directors Andy and Larry Wachowski), offer the visual games of their Matrix series as a starting point.  Then they layer on so many techniques, references and changes of era that it’s probably best to put your mind in neutral and simply let Speed Racer take you for a ride.  Since one doesn’t expect the plot of a film like this to hold up to intense scrutiny, why should its style?  The most striking aspect of all are the color palettes that the brothers have chosen, jumping wantonly from psychedelic saturation, to eight-hue print comic book tones (shades of Dick Tracy starring Warren Beatty) to the 1950’s pastels used to depict home life for the Racer family.

The story?  Take young Speed’s obsession with cars (the Racer family business); fold in his relationship with his older brother Rex; add his need to prove himself, tempered by an inner strength that allows him to say no to temptation; toss in a little innocent adolescent romance, an annoying kid brother and a chimp.  Then hurl the whole thing at the screen and let it unfold rapidly and seemingly at random.  Reeling backward and forward on the track of time, the film provides double crosses, false identities, Ninjas, guns, and, unforgettably, flying chimp feces.  But always, the object is speed and visual overload and, on its own terms, Speed Racer doesn’t disappoint.

Emile Hirsch as Speed, mugs intensely throughout.  Susan Sarandon as Mom spends her onscreen moments being very sincere, and John Goodman is completely wasted as Pops, the film’s moral center.  Goodman, for all of his bulk, is a very subtle actor.  Confronted with a one-dimensional role, this gifted performer has trouble coming up with that one dimension.  Christina Ricci, who has never looked better, provides the virginal love interest. 

In terms of performances, though, one of the most enjoyable aspects of the film is the parade of more than a dozen racing announcers who babble fatuous clichés in every imaginable language throughout the driving action, providing young viewers a Greek chorus of geeky adults.

            See it with someone shorter than you.