I’m being serious here. Kind of.
Over the weekend a couple of friends of mine and I watched the Wachowski Brothers’ Speed Racer—the critical consensus is that it’s one of the worst movies they’ve directed. (The reason I had the disc was because I’d heard its video was prime demo material for a home theater setup, and every once in a while I’m a sucker for that sort of thing.)
But to our surprise, the film was actually… kind of enjoyable? It was probably about 30 minutes before any of us in the room would admit aloud that we actually liked watching the movie, but by the end we all agreed that we regretted not seeing it in a theater. By the standards of conventional filmmaking, it’s terrible—it has only the merest suggestion of plot and character, leaving nothing worth noting but a 135-minute exercise in style. But is that necessarily a bad thing?
There are two things that made this movie stand out for me:
- It has colors! All of them! Not just teal and orange! There’s one extended sequence that seems contrived primarily to show you shades of purple—pale lavenders, and pure bright purples, and darker purples that seem almost black. I have to think back to 1990’s Dick Tracy to come up with a film that was so in love with the simple pleasure of looking at colors.
- It doesn’t have the faintest interest in realism—in fact, it’s continually drawing attention to how patently fake it looks. Race cars aren’t propelled by their own power, but are tossed carelessly down the tracks, as if by an invisible toddler’s hand. The tracks themselves seem as if they may be topological impossibilities. There are plenty of shots in which both foreground and background are in focus, so that the entire image looks flat, with no hint of a third dimension.
Once in a while, those two features combine to provide a startling image. Lots of cars flip over and explode during the movie, and the first few create the expected huge orange balls of flame—around the middle of the movie, though, a series of wrecked vehicles explode in flames of powder blue instead. No explanation is provided for this.
And then there are short scenes that lift from a number of different pop-cultural sources to create something uniquely bizarre. This screenshot speaks for itself. (The all-caps Comic Sans subtitles are burned into the image in the original film.)
For a film like this, I’d say that asking whether it’s good or not is posing the wrong question. Questions about a work of art’s “goodness” are sometimes just a way of judging the extent to which the work of art in front of us lines up with the work of art we’ve been led to expect by marketing or convention, and at least some of the design decisions of Speed Racer seem to have been made with full knowledge that they’d be generally perceived as garish (like the purple) or tacky (like the Comic Sans subtitles). But the way in which it works well is as an extreme reminder of what films, and especially fantasy and science fiction films, can place on screen. With the ever-expanding tools available to filmmakers, films don’t have to mimic the real world, or obey the laws of physics, or try to convince you that a fantastic element in a film fits in comfortably amongst a number of other, supposedly more realistic ones.* Granted, if every film had Speed Racer‘s color palette, my eyes would probably melt in my head, and the only suspense it offers comes from wondering what you’ll see next, and whether you’ll find it surprising, or pleasurable, or bothersome, or atrocious. But it was undoubtedly a refreshing change of pace, and how often can you say that about a movie?
*The antithesis of this film for me is The Dark Knight, which I also liked for what it was—however, almost everything about its look and feel gives the indication that it wants to convince you that it’s set in something like the real world, which is admittedly strange for a film about a playboy billionaire who dresses up as a bat to fight crime.
Dexter Palmer is the author of The Dream of Perpetual Motion, published by St. Martin’s Press. (Take a look at the novel’s online gallery!)
I agree. It’s not a good film, but it’s amazing visual candy.
Loved this film!
I went with low expectations, because all of the reviews slaughtered it. But, once I got used to the Nintendo appearance, it was one of the most enjoyable films I’ve seen in years.
Admittedly, I’m not interested in thought-provoking theatre. They make books for that sort of thing (When I was young movies were called books). When I shell out 20 bucks for two hours of entertainment and junk food, independent thinking should not be a requirement.
This one met and exceeded all of my requirements for a movie. It had tons of action, great special effects, clear (almost childlike) lines between good and evil, and a dramatic finish.
I don’t know if folks went expecting a Wachowski mind bending plot; but what they got was Wachowski level fight scenes – with cars. lol
I’m in the (apparently small) camp that says this IS a good movie, especially for families. Not only is it visually inventive, creating a Saturday-morning-cartoon alternate universe, but my kids were as captured by the scenes of family interaction as they were by the racing. The Wachowskis and the actors fully commit to their world, while keeping a sense of wonder and adventure.
Not every film needs to be thought-provoking, but Speed Racer certainly had more thought and heart behind it than something like Transformers.
I’ve not looked into this, but I suspect that the W Brothers were paying tribute to an early influence more than trying to tell a mind bending and original story.
Speed Racer was my first baptism into Story. I watched it religiously from about age two or three on. That’s when I first realized I really wanted to have a monkey sidekick.
And because of that childhood connection, I really enjoyed the movie. It was a nice reminder with lots of clever bits from the cartoon woven into it, visually stunning, and evoking that sense I used to get when it came on each day.
Of course, not all childhood TV to film translations have worked as well for me. Say, for example, Land of the Lost….
Speed Racer was my favourite movie of 2008. I am not being ironic or sarcastic. (For context, my favourites of all time include Dr. Strangelove, Lawrence of Arabia, and Repo Man.)
It’s basically a $200 million arthouse film for kids. What’s not to adore?
Well, I’m unashamed to say that I loved this movie and I have forced friends to watch it with me.
I would completely agree if Speed Racer had been seventy-five minutes long, containing no more than eight complete lines dialog. That would have been awesome. Weirdly, though, there were entire scenes of people talking to each other about stuff, and not just one but several. Any one of those scenes would have been enough to get the “we’re going to do this scene not like normal but with the swooshy-swoosh” point across.
“Is it good?” isn’t the wrong question, it’s just too broad a question. It’s perfectly acceptable to ask what the movie’s doing, and then whether it’s doing that thing well. Speed Racer is garish and tacky, but is it doing garish and tacky well? Well, kind of, but it’s awfully pleased with itself for violating the usual good-taste strictures of movie-making, and that makes them lose focus. 135 minutes is a long time to watch someone else’s self-satisfaction.
Actually, it’s also got a good story but people focused so much on the visuals that they jettisoned any notion that the story works. And it does. But it’s a bit on the subtle side, which is at odds with the in-your-face design. I’m a little surprised that anyone who writes or creates for a living would miss the theme of the film. Think about corporatism vs. the creative process and go look at it again.
For the record, Speed Racer has been getting the cult film love since it came out. The voice just isn’t loud enough yet. I went to see it because a friend said it was incredible and he was right. Oh — and seeing it in a theater? Incredible.
So glad this article was written. My friend and I always felt we were the only ones that felt this way about Speed Racer. If my webcomic Panda Force ever got made into a live action movie I’d want it made by the W Brothers and totally in this style. It’d probably be a spectacular flop, but we are living in an increasingly cynical world.
No, actually the movie is terrible. It’s a terrible art film, yes, but “art film” is not synonymous with “good.”
I was stunned that I liked this movie so much when I gritted my teeth and watched it on DVD. It was kind of brilliant.
I liked everything except the segment with Spritle riding on a Segway. At least, that bit with Spritle is the worst one, there may be others that I’ve forgotten.
It seemed to me that the movie worked hard to include many languages being spoken. The catchy theme song that starts with the original Mach GoGoGo lyrics has what, five different languages in it?
I too loved this flick! Is it a “good” movie? To be honest, I don’t know that it really matters to me. I thought they did an amazing job of creating a live action version of Speed Racer. I don’t know how they could have been more true to the original concept of the cartoon. Ok, maybe there was “too much” dialogue to be completely honest to it, but I always get sucked in to it if I come across it on a movie channel. It’s just a really FUN flick. Ok, now I have the urge to watch it again.
I didn’t see Speed Racer in the theater because I heard it was terrible, and I wasn’t invested enough in the source material to go see it anyway (which is why I saw, for example, Spiderman 3 in the theater. Glargh).
But I happened to catch it on cable not too long ago, and was really surprised at how much I liked it.
I enjoyed it in almost the exact same way I enjoyed Moulin Rouge!; both films have this bright, hyper, unabashed sense of glee about them that I find very appealing. It looked like *fun*, like the filmmakers weren’t so much painting a picture as they were having a paintball war.
And I didn’t find the story bad, either; it was simplistic, but I thought it was deliberately so, in keeping with the general tone of childlike wonder. And the acting was not half-bad, either, especially John Goodman and Susan Sarandon, but I thought the kid playing Speed did very well, too.
In all, I don’t get why it got panned so badly at all. I guess it just wasn’t what people were expecting out of a Wachowski brothers film. Pigeonholing FTW, not.
All films are art films because film is an art.
For the marketing category of “art film,” SPEED RACER doesn’t fit because it doesn’t appeal to that target demographic.
That said, it was a startling movie, did a number of interesting, non-realistic, non-naturalistic things, and will be better-loved in the future when more people figure out what exactly was going on.
I fucking loved it. More than my kid, even.
I loved this movie. It didn’t try to make the world of the anime fit into our world. What it did instead is show us an alternate universe where different rules apply. I think that ten years from now people will see it and think it way ahead of its time visually.
My boss fired me (not really) for liking this movie, but it’s a lot of fun.
The casting and characterizations (thin as they are) are perfect, from Pops down to Chim-Chim.
It’s a candy-colored confection, with more psychadelia than the second half of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
It had me from the moment they said, “They’re entering the moguls.” Racecar driving isn’t enough to have Nascar-like crashes, we have to add UFC violence and X-Games action. It’s a natural SFnal outgrowth of today.
Is it a movie I can go back to again and again and find something new, like Ronin or Big Lebowski? No. But if it’s on HBO, I’ll give it a few minutes.
Full disclosure: This is my favorite movie. Because it fills me with joy.
I agree with Dexter about how we often judge films against our expectations or against conventions, and I think that’s why so many people panned Speed Racer. They expected it to be certain things (TV Tropes suggests a lot of people heard “Wachowski” and expected “The Matrix in cars”), and then dissed it for not being those things while completely ignoring what it was.
It’s unabashed fun. It’s pretty (my brother saw it first and described it to me as “the colors of candy”). There are FIGHTS IN CARS. At one point, there’s a ninja (because why not?), and one of the characters even says “Oh my god, was that a ninja?!” It KNOWS how crazy it is, and it doesn’t care. This movie is my hero.
And I disagree that it’s in any way lacking in story or characters. No, it’s not a complicated story, and the characters aren’t deep psychological enigmas. But not every movie/book/etc. has to be that way, and I don’t think simplicity = lacking. It would’ve been much worse to overcomplicate it unnecessarily. It had plenty of character and story — see, for example, the scene between Racer X and Speed after Casa Cristo, or between Speed and Pops towards the end. It may not change your life or how you look at the universe, but it’s good.
The video game is pretty fun, too. ;)
To quote someone else on this movie:
“It’s like freebasing skittles and crystal meth.”
It is also overlong for the amount of story it is trying to tell, but I liked it more than I was expecting to. Sure was bright. And the many nods to the original cartoon were nice.
I, too, was surprised by how enjoyable this film was. I think of it as the MarioKart movie we will never have.
I’m not even sure that this is an Art Movie for kids. It’s a *Movie* for *Kids*. A well thought out and well executed movie for kids. The W Brothers quite clearly got to make movies for their inner 7 year olds and not their inner 17 yr olds like they usually do.
The colours were awesome and draw you into the fantasy of the piece.
The plot was just complex enough. My son (4 at the time) watched it and followed it perfectly.
The charac(a)t(u)er(e)s were a lot of fun, perfectly cast and vividly drawn.
One criticism I read was that there was too much talking and not enough racing to interest a 10-year-old. Hmm. Not in the version of the movie that I saw.
In summation I (and my son) had a huge smile on my face when the credits finished rolling. As soon as I could I was helping my son play with his toy cars and tossing them “carelessly down the tracks” with the not-so-invisible hand of a boy a little older than a toddler.
Apart from a few words here and there that a 10 yr old would be OK with but a pre-schooler doesn’t need to hear it was a Monster hit in our house.
It is one of my favourite movies, kid’s or otherwise.
Count me in the “love Speed Racer” camp. I agree that it’s not a good movie, but it is a really fun movie. The cinematography is sensational, the costumes are wonderful, and the whole color scheme is so bright. Also, w/r/t the characters and plot: it’s a classic good versus evil story, and while it’s not that deep, it is done really well. And Christina Ricci looks excellent.
On the reception: I was really puzzled by all the hate this movie received. I tend to be rather harder on movies than the mainstream (I loathe Avatar with every fiber of my being), and I just found Speed Racer so fun and unobjectionable; yet it continually pops up on worst movie ever lists. Very odd.
I’m going with Troylis on this. My 11 year old brother-in-law ate this movie up. Especially the kid and money scenes.
And it was pretty.
And Cristina Ricci was in it.
It did suspend some basic rules and laws, like the law of gravity, but it was campy fun. I was not aware of any backlash for this movie, but then again, I am out here in the styx and I do not follow tabloids. Guess this was packaged like Dick Tracy in that sense, flashy, toy spin offs, but bombed. Too bad.
And I do loathe Avatar as well. James Cameron still owes me for Titanic. Sucked me in with Terminator and then took that off the rails with 5 hours of sinking boat.
Woof™.
Other people who love this movie! I never thought you existed!!!
I adored this film. It was so pretty. And just when I thought I couldn’t love it any more, the ninjas appeared.
It is the only film I have watched where I thought to myself “I need to get a Bluray setup so I can enjoy this again and again”.
It’s just so pretty…
I made a point of seeing it at an IMAX theatre on the grounds that, if I’m going to see a special effects-driven movie I might as well see it on the biggest screen possible. I enjoyed it more than I expected to.
I loved this movie and I show it to people whenever I can because they probably didn’t see it, I like it a lot, and my friends trust me – so far everyone I’ve shown this to has (before) “Uuuhhh, ok, if you say so” (after) “That was [actually pretty good | awesome]”.
The W Bros, the producers, and everybody associated with the construction of this film knew what they were doing. The level of fidelity to the original cartoon was nearly astonishing. The completely unrealistic behaviors of the cars and drivers, the lack of damage to body panels from 100+ MPH contacts between vehicles, the ridiculous jumps, flips, and slides, the attached weapons, all paid tribute to the source with outstanding authenticity. And of course the most unrealistic and implausible of all, John Goodman as a Greco-Roman wrestling champion.
The scenery, beyond the splashy colors, fisheye fields of view, and unusual depth of field, also took from the old school anime style, where long zoom shots and broad pans give dramatic flair to the action and make the foreground object, whether character or car, seem much bigger than life.
The presentation and interaction of the characters was just as honest to the cartoon, especially including the hardest to accomplish, RacerRex. (Err, X Racer. Umm, Racerexracerexracerex… Drat.)
The simple truth is, it was FUN. I’m reminded of a scene from Mr. Holland’s Opus where Richard Dreyfuss’ character is explaining to a “concerned” faculty member that music doesn’t have to be classicly valid to be enjoyable, citing the crudely composed but insanely popular “Louie Louie”.
So, critics can say what they want, but if you had fun, you had fun.
For me, the real triumph of this movie was that Spriedel and Chim-Chim are actually funny! (I’m old enough to remember the original airing of the English version, and I always wanted to kill them.)
I first caught this little gem on HBO. My wife kept teasing me about how often she would come into the room and find me watching it “again.” Then she picked up a copy for me, almost as a sort of joke, and I’ve been returning for another viewing again and again . . . and now she’s watching with me. This movie attempts no pretence of being a great one, but it’s tons of fun to watch.
It seems to be a relatively common thing that some of the movies that are later considered the most popular cult films are nearly total flops when they come out.
Lupin III: Castle of Cagliostro, Hayao Miyazaki’s first feature-length cinematic outing, was widely panned when it first came out because Miyazaki had toned down the Lupin gang from their manga and TV appearances to where they were almost unrecognizable—but as years went by it became the best-loved Lupin III work ever, to the point where every single Lupin special or OAV that comes out these days has to include at least one highly-visible Cagliostro reference.
Likewise, the original Blues Brothers movie didn’t do really well on its first release, and its poor performance at the box office is thought to be one of the factors that led to John Belushi’s eventual death by drug overdose. Now it’s considered a classic. (Sadly, Blues Brothers 2000 flopped because it was just awful.)
Wonder if Speed Racer is going to be another one of those.
Hatgirl: Other people who love this movie! I never thought you existed!!!
I haven’t been able to check in here for a couple of days, but it’s cool to see the affection for this movie. If I’ve been able to bring people together, my work here is done.
Robotech_Master: It seems to be a relatively common thing that some of the movies that are later considered the most popular cult films are nearly total flops when they come out.
I would put John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China on that list as well. If memory serves, it did poorly on its initial release for the same reasons as Speed Racer: namely, that it was brightly colored and weird, and not really like earlier movies by the same director.
I also loved this movie–the visuals were stunning, and surprisingly able to work to tell the story, even at it’s most hectic moments. I even thought the story and acting was pretty solid. It was just a great kids movie–something that’s kinda rare these days, from what I’ve seen.
I thought the music was perfect! I’ve been a fan of the original when it was on first run so even being an older guy now I was transported back to those afterschool weekdays of watching Speed on TV. I thought the whole storyline worked as a Speed Racer story. As soon as the ninjas showed up I was excited and I was hoping some giant apes and a dragon sub would soon follow lol… but no dice. But we did get a race to match the style of the old TV show and I had a good time… all 7 or 8 times I’ve watch the movie : )
I enjoyed watching this movie in theaters. It wasn’t what I was expecting (I was expecting a shorter movie that was more about being cool and less about family), but it was good enough that I watched it on DVD with a friend later, and it will certainly be one of the first films I watch when I upgrade to Blu-Ray.
I think it was a far better movie than V for Vendetta, a movie that is dwarfed by its source material in every conceivable way.
I would say Speed Racer is the ultimate Shonen movie, full of talking heads and friendship speeches and awesome action with amazing visuals and a couple nice updating touches (The Racer X secret id made a tad more sense here). It’s sunny whereas something like Sin City is noirish, but it’s got the same kind of love and energy behind it.
look at this talkback! i am not alone! the critics NEVER GOT IT! i add to the love for this movie and hopes it continues to get cult acclaim
This film had my five year old son literally jumping up and down out of his seat. (Fortunately, his ‘sploding head was only figurative.) I loved it because it managed to be true to the source while winkingly over the top and joyously goofy at the same time.
The critics who panned this film either missed the point and/or have NEVER seen a single episode of the original series!
They will eat their words 25-30 years from now! :D
I so love this movie and am bummed I missed it on the big screem (stayed away because of the reveiws).
Anyone know if it fared better in the international market?
I saw this movie at midnight, opening day, i was one of four or five people in the theater, as i dragged some friends and family along with me haha. I grew up watching old vhs tapes of the show as a child and absolutely loved it! I honestly think i only ever saw four or five episodes as a child over and over, but in going back over the complete series recently i found that the episodes i did see embodied the entire series rather well.
as for the movie– immediately when i saw it i loved it. the reviewers who claimed it had little to do with the cartoon series never saw the series as children. it was all about the characters to me, sure they were cheesy, but they were also spot on (i half expected a voice over to come on screen saying “this is racer x, unbeknownst to speed his brother who disappeared years ago” like it does in every racer x episode haha) loved the colors, loved the races, loved the music. this is my favorite movie of all time. The next day at school (i was a junior in high school at the time) cars zoomed by and music blared through my head, much like the opening scene with speed in his classroom.
so here i am reading countless of comments from people who expected it to be terrible and didn’t go and spend their money in the theater, which collectively could have turned it into a success, and as a result we could be seeing something amazing from the wachowski’s, and instead we haven’t seen anything written by them since 2008.
Yup, there is nothing like the bond between a boy and his monkey:)
@Dexter, I am all in with “Big Trouble in Little China”. Hands down my fav. Lookit my profile. Like my old friend Jack Burton used to say… never drive faster than you can see.
Good times:)
Woof™.
Guys, I have never understood why this movie received such vitriol from the critics. Come on, Indiana Jones 4 came out the same month and I will never watch that again. Just put the DVD on Vudu to watch whenever.
Dear Leigh Butler;
Have You Ever Seen Another Movie LookLike Moulin Rouge And Speed Racer?