By William Hong
The Wachowksi brothers' ambitious retuning of Speed Racer sputters plotwise, but vrooms visually. The Blu-ray's mileage will vary from person to person.
Speed Racer had everything going against it the moment the first trailer hit the web. The odd combination of futuristic vistas and candy colored visuals was an immediate turn-off for many. I was expecting something worse: a mature, modern day hip-hop infused adaptation. After all, recent racing films like the decent The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift and the dreadful Redline have catered at least partially to adults. So an adaptation of old timey anime for children and graying fans of the original should play the same way...right?
Not just the critics (the film has an aggregate rating of 37% on Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes), but it seemed like everybody, including the fans, had something against the film. One of my friends even griped about a white guy, Emile Hirsch, playing Speed. I had to remind him that the movie was an adaptation of the Speed Racer show, which itself is an American adaptation of the Mach GoGoGo anime from the 60s. Others complained about the futuristic racing aesthetics, with all the gravity-defying loops and spinning cars. What everyone probably expected was a more conventional design, but writer-directors Andy and Larry Wachowski are notorious for their sometimes overly ambitious forays. That fans were disgruntled about the Matrix sequels only contributed to the pessimism. The movie had everything going against it...and it failed critically and financially.
Instead of adhering to the safe, by-the-book approach of so many comic/cartoon adaptations, the Wachowskis boldly created a distinct new world for the film. Still, beneath the high-tech veneer is an adaptation that retains the heart and soul of the original cartoon: stunt racing and family togetherness. Both the cartoon and film centers on the Racer family, a cohesive unit devoted to the sport of stunt automobile racing. Tragedy befalls the Racer family when the eldest son and racing prodigy, Rex (Scott Porter), is killed in a tragic crash. Crestfallen, but not discouraged, Rex's younger brother Speed develops into an amazing racer driven by the desire to win. His supportive family is comprised of Pops Racer (John Goodman), Mom Racer (Susan Sarandon), girlfriend Trixie (Christina Ricci), annoying younger brother Spritle (Paulie Litt), and the family chimp, Chim Chim.
The Racer males are what made the colorful family compelling in the series: their individuality. The cartoon had a curious fusion of postwar American and Japanese cultures: a strong-willed, male-oriented family of individuals with distinctive characteristics. Despite the film's updated world, they converse and behave as if they were in the 60s: an almost picture perfect family living in a suburb with white picket fences, dropping phrases like "cool beans" and "gee whiz." It's kitschy, corny, and a little anachronistic, but infuses the character with a simple, wholesome charm that contrast the darker direction that the Wachowskis adopt.
Where the cartoon and film diverge is the plot. In the film, racing is a lucrative sport that's tightly controlled and manipulated by a corporation, Royalton Industries, continuing the Wachowksis trend of having an evil entity pulling the strings behind everything in their films. This is tacked on to the original premise, a coming-of-age story about hope, expectation, and overcoming personal loss. This results in a meandering middle act where Speed is forced to team up with the mysterious Racer X (Matthew Fox) and the shifty Taejo Togokhan (Rain) to expose the Royalton CEO (Roger Allam) of all his wrongdoings.
Casting is spot-on, but unbalanced. The Racer family is perfectly cast. Goodman is solid as the gruff, but loving Pops, Sarandon is under-utilized as Mom, Ricci provides the requisite romantic interest, and Paulie Litt's Spritle shenanigans are annoying if you're not in elementary school. Allam, the snarling Voice of England in V for Vendetta, perfectly plays the film's easy to hate Royalton. The only miscue is Rain, who plays a mostly useless and forgettable character central to the film's weakest area: the film's overdrawn anti-corporate subplot. There's a message against conformity and corporatism, but the exposition is thankfully nowhere near as opaque as The Matrix sequels. It saps any momentum the film had going, especially considering the film's target audience: young children with fleeting attention spans.
Aside from their fondness of conspiracy-driven subplots, the Wachowskis uses the film as another vehicle for distinct and eye-catching visual storytelling. The film's strongest aspects are the boldly inventive visuals techniques. There's a very unique use of evocative colors, comic-style shading, and anime-esque movement. The Wachowski brothers adopt a camera technique that emulates how anime is animated, scrolling background layers and shifting foreground images to create the illusion of movement. Speed Racer does so with live actors and CG backgrounds to great effect: a unique narrative splicing of past and present footage unfolds whenever the characters explain or reminisce events.
Compared to the stylistic approach of the Star Wars prequels and other CG-intensive blockbusters, which use fixed cameras and relatively tame tracking shots, Speed Racer dynamically ducks into, swerves around and under the action in a style unlike any green-screen films before it. This results in spectacular racing sequences that transcend comparison. The free-flowing camera also punctuates the stylized and artistic action sequences. The fight sequence in the middle of the film is particularly impressive, with its dynamic color usage, exciting camera movement, and campy humor reminiscent of the old Batman TV show, sans the pow! boom! and zap! exclamations.
If there is one Blu-ray to show off your home theater system, this is it. The image quality is razor sharp and the colors are vibrant. There's a neat half-hour making-of documentary that details the technical production of the film. There are also two other silly featurettes, one featuring Spritle on the set and another that profiles the film's diverse set of racers. The package also includes an atrocious and barely interactive DVD game and another DVD containing a digital copy of the film. By conveniently providing a digital copy, Warner Home Video hopes to curb piracy by removing the need for consumers to rip movies (or download them off the net) onto their PCs and portable video devices.
Surprisingly bold and experimental, this lifelike cartoon is hampered by a pedantic middle and has a predictable, but still uplifting, finale. Speed Racer could use The Phantom Edit treatment: remove the contrived Rain subplot, cut back on Spritle's antics, and place less emphasis on the anti-corporate theme and the film would be more accessible. As it is, the film is geared more towards anime fanboys and young children. Despite its length, it's also a solid family film. Compared to a typical cartoon adaptation, a commendable amount of effort was put into pushing the franchise in a different direction without compromising its charm.
The Wachowskis would-be avant-garde blockbuster isn't for everyone, but it brought out kid in me that loves fast cars, colorful action, and seeing the hero realize his dream.
Published: Friday, November 14, 2008
