Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
5/24/07
Yes,
as Uncle Ben told us, with great power comes great responsibility.
But in Hollywood, great power (earned through great success) also
brings great opportunity. While the notion of a film version of the
popular 60's anime series Speed Racer has been kicking around for
years, it's hard to imagine that anyone but the most respected and powerful
filmmakers could get this version made. Luckily for Larry
and Andy Wachowki, they redefined the modern action movie with the uberblockbuster
The Matrix, allowing them a virtually blank creative check for their
directorial follow-up to its' disappointing but still highly profitable
sequels. Speed Racer is out there on a ledge, set in an almost
entirely digital world created with all manner of new effects technology,
and at 135 minutes, this unreal world kinda wears out its' welcome.
But Racer gets right what a movie really needs: it's got a
big, humanist heart, and a first-rate cast puts just enough meat on the
bones of the Racer family to make me care about them. The middle
hour is a black hole, but there are lots of small pleasures here, most
of them shockingly human.
Young
Speed Racer (Nicholas Elia) dreams of being a race car driver like his
older brother Rex (Scott Porter), who races under the sponsorship of his
father, Pops (John Goodman). But big money sponsors come calling
and Rex decides to race for them. Tossed out of the family home,
he gains a reputation as a corrupt competitor, and is finally killed in
a dangerous cross-country road race called The Crucible. Speed grows
up (into Emile Hirsch) and follows in his brother's footsteps, finally
becoming good enough to be wooed by E.P. Royalton (Roger Allam), whose
billion dollar racing empire is housed in a corporate tower that should
be investigated by Spy Kids' OSS. Despite his best efforts,
Speed decides to pass, at which time Royalton tells him that everything
he believes about racing is wrong: it's corrupt to the bone, each
year's Grand Prix is fixed and he has the power to destroy Speed's career.
After hardships begin to befall the entire Racer family, Speed hooks up
with police Inspector Detector (Benno Furmann) and mysterious rival Racer
X (Matthew Fox) to compete in The Crucible hoping to either get the goods
on Royalton or at least qualify to become the first man ever to win the
Grand Prix fair and square.
Say
this for Speed Racer: there's never been another movie that
looks quite like it. A kaleidoscope of primary colors, it also uses
breakthrough camera technology to keep all parts of the frame in focus
at all times just like an old cartoon (leave it to Hollywood to spend millions
to duplicate the look of cheap animation). The race cars fly by at
breakneck speed on ridiculously improbable tracks: this world IS
a cartoon, and yet it's populated by real, living people who seem to have
no idea that it's odd to be named Speed Racer or Inspector Detector or
to have your family include a chimp named Chim Chim. But a little
of this goes a long way, particularly during The Crucible, when groups
of racers from all over the world (I did enjoy how they travel in little
stereotypical packs including Viking Racers) do battle in cars outfitted
with all manner of James Bond-style weapons. There's little real
menace here (the movie's PG rating goes all the way to its' bones) and
also little sense that we're watching real forces like gravity at work.
I could have stood to lose the entire Crucible, but wherever they got it
from, the movie could easily have been 45 minutes shorter. And a
little of comic relief kid Spritle Racer and the aforementioned Chim Chim
goes a REALLY long way.
But
one of the things that made The Matrix special was that at its'
heart, it was a metaphor about human potential, and in that way Speed
Racer has more in common with it than either of its' own sequels.
We live in an age when corruption and cynicism compete to see which runs
more rampant, and the story here, about the collision of ultimate corruption
and ultimate idealism, is actually resonant in its' own goofy way.
Credit here goes to the actors: Hirsch doesn't get many attributes
as Speed, but he's all in on his square decency, and manages to accumulate
a lot of moral stature. Fox struggles monotonously with the part
of the movie where Racer X wears a mask, but once he gets it off, he has
several excellent scenes. Goodman and Susan Sarandon as the aptly
named Mom Racer provide the appropriate parental decency and Pops' arc
as he tries to learn from the mistakes he made when pushing Rex away has
some teeth. Christina Ricci is spunky and fun as nominal love interest
Trixie. But the best performance comes from Allam, who shined as
a British Rush Limbaugh in the Wachowski-scripted V for Vendetta
and here makes Royalton a tour de force of scene chewing fiendishness.
Best of all is his speech to Speed about how corruption rules racing:
in its' own way, it's the popcorn movie “Greed is Good,” and its' blunt
cruelty provides the engine for the rest of the plot. Perversely,
when the movie allows the characters to relate as people, it's better than
when it lets loose the spectacle, and the accumulation of good will for
them proves to be just the charge the Grand Prix climax needs to stand
out above the other action sequences. It's probably the only film
I can remember where flashes of dialog from earlier in a movie incorporated
in the climax are actually effective and the race is filmed in a way that
made me think of 2001: The Wachowskis want us thinking of
Speed's race for a fair victory as a challenge to his human potential,
and I was really surprised by how effective it all is.
I've
seen The Matrix (a few dozen times) and you, Speed Racer,
are no The Matrix. But between all the padding, kids stuff
and excessive faith in its' own visual spectacle, there is a good movie
in there. I don't remember a lot of the Speed Racer I saw
as a kid, but the movie nicely captures that spirit of ultimate dogooderness
we get from our childhood heroes and should play very well for those who
do. Given the greatness of their earlier work, I don't begrudge The
Wachowski Brothers the chance to get this out of their system. Maybe
next time they can get back to the grown-up stuff. |
