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Speed Racer

Review By: Dan Deevy
DanDeevy@TheCinemaSource.com

I knew going into this film that I was either going to love it or hate it. The stills that I had seen show this very weird mix of live action, animation, CGI and green screen work that made it difficult to discern what exactly this world was made of or what it was supposed to look like. And also just the concept of taking this one trick wonder cartoon and turning it into a feature length film with major Hollywood talent seemed a bit off base. I mean, how do you possibly create an interesting enough story around all the car racing and special effects to hold an audiences attention for almost two full hours? Everything early on pointed to either obvious disaster or amazing come from behind triumph.

Now, after finally seeing the film I’m pleased to say it was the latter - an Amazing Triumph! This film is, to use a rather antiquated expression, from soup to nuts… brilliant!

Growing up I was aware of the Speed Racer cartoon but my attention always fell more towards Voltron and Transformers than it did to the guy in the white car on the race track, so I never really paid close attention to it. So I’ve never actually sat through an entire episode of good old Speed; but after seeing this film that may change.

Speed Racer as a live action movie was completely true to the spirit of the original cartoon and unlike most remakes lately (the despicable Transformers for example), it has a real respect and understanding of the source material. It obviously took a staggering amount of imagination and thought to figure out a way to translate this onto the big screen, but c’mon that’s why it’s worthy of making Millions and Millions of Dollars!!! Too often writers and producers in Hollywood will say it’s too hard to keep things true to the initial concept or that it just ‘wouldn’t translate well on screen so we changed it,’ instead of working really hard to figure out a way to make it work! Thankfully rather than cop out behind excuses the creative team behind Speed Racer did it the right way and it really shows!

The most important thing in a movie like this, well in any movie really, is that there be a real story with true heart at the core of it. For so many big wigs in Hollywood these days story is last on their check list (Michael Bay). It’s all about the look, the marketability and how ...