SPEEDRACER

Maybe if I'd ever watched the original Speed Racer cartoons, I might have liked the movie. Instead, I was startled by the frantic, futuristic, sensory overload that was Speedracer, the movie. It was cartoony...which could have been charming, yet I felt was corny. And for the first 10 or so minutes, as they set up the scene for us, we get jostled back and forth between the past and the present while Speed has flashbacks to his childhood. I was totally confused. First we see Speed as a kid...then he's grown and driving...then he's a kid with his big brother, Rex....then we hear announcers saying that his brother was killed awhile ago...then he's a kid watching his brother leave home...then he's driving again, and we see his family in the stands...but wait, now there's another kid with the family...is he Speed's kid?...or maybe that's Speed and this isn't a flashback after all..And so it went until I finally figured out what was going on. Maybe devoted Speed Racer fans will like it..I did read that the cartoon was kinda like that - kinda quick and quirky. Or maybe it's just a guy thing, because my 8 year old son and my husband liked it.

It stars Emile Hirsch (Alpha Dog, Into the Wild) as "Speed"; John Goodman as Pops, Susan Sarandon as Mom, Christina Ricci at Trixie, and Matthew Fox as Racer X. It was directed by the Wachowski brothers, who directed the Matrix movies. Here's the plot in a nutshell...money hungry guy offers Speed a contract to join his team...Speed is tempted but turns him down...money hungry guy gets mad...We find out that the races are "fixed" by the guys with money and power....the final race will settle things. As Racer X said..."we may not change racing, but the important thing is..will racing change us?" Or something like that..I'm not sure, since I was visually overstimulated. (I thought I had read it was 1 hr 35 min running time, but I discovered I had misread that...it was actually 135 minutes!!! Thats' over two hours, people!!!)

It was rated PG - yet I heard the following words: Damn, Ass, Sh-t. There was also a scene where the bad guys are roughing up a driver, and they show his bloodied face. That wasn't so bad, but then some other guy gets his finger eaten by piranhas. While we don't see the actual finger-eating...we do see the guy from behind as it happens, and we get to see the water in the fish-tank turn swirly-red. Kinda harsh for PG, I think.

So, in the end, I can't figure out if this review is useless or not. I guess I can say I didn't like it...but maybe it did a good job of reproducing the original. So I'll just say this: if you remember and love the original...go see the movie. BUT...if you've never seen the original, and if your favorite childhood shows were Loony Tunes or Gilligan's Island, then you can probably skip it.