Review: Speed Racer 6/10

Speed Racer, the newest spectacle from the Wachowski brothers is, for all intensive purposes, only that: an entirely visual experience. It’s one of the most inventively realized and altogether psychedelic action movies I’ve seen in a long time, but take away all the glitz and cinemagic, and I’m not sure what’s left. Not much, I think. Of course, when you have 2 hours of continuous fluorescent colors, streaming psychedelia, and spinning (sometimes to the point of being almost nonsensical) images, why do you need things like “three-dimensional characters” or “a story”?

The characters here aren’t so much people as paper-thin excuses for yet another over-long car-race. This state of affairs is a shame, given that the film is a veritable parade of recognizable actors hamming it up as potentially-interesting characters. John Goodman, Benno Furmann, Richard Roundtree, Matthew Fox, Susan Sarandon, Christina Ricci, and even Emile Hirsch as the eponymous character, all get buried under the avalanche of special effects.

Only John Goodman as the patriarch of the Racer family, though, really succeeds in digging himself out of the mess and distinguishing himself as a person, rather than as a mouthpiece. This is mainly, if not solely, because of his lack of on-the-track time. He has to play the spectator and thus becomes the anchor for all the spinning action around him, holding his family together and calling the audience to care about something more resonant than the next semi-animated orgy of flash.

The story is a simple, anti-corporate screed with a “do what you love, not what fills your pockets” message. It’s a serviceable outline upon which to hang a nice string of action sequences, all of which allow the audience to root for the underdog-hero as he competes against the big-business stooges who threaten the Racer family’s idyllic, candy-colored life. But really, the point of this cute little message is just an excuse to set up a series of increasingly grandiose set-pieces that are used in lieu of character development or, say, dialogue, in order to prove points and to advance the story. One race just becomes the impetus for the next one.

It’s funny that Iron Man and Speed Racer opened in theatres within a few weeks of each other. Macroscopically, they are surprisingly similar -- they’re both comic-book adaptations heavy on the special effects, glitzy and big-budget, with pseudo-traumatized heroes in the title-roles. However, this is where the similarities cease. These two films could be used as an example of how a modicum of character-development can pay off large dividends in the emotional heft of the film as a whole. Iron Man is admittedly a very flashy film, but in focusing on the human element, it engages the audience in a way that Speed Racer does not. You care about Tony Stark in a way that you do not for Speed Racer, and that makes all the difference in the world.

The movie, in its defense, is designed very well to avoid most of the sticky problems caused by such things as “character arcs” and “meaningful story”. It works. The problem is that without such mundane and non-special effects-driven underpinnings, the cumulative impact is lessened. On the whole, Speed Racer is beautiful to look at, but it’s empty.

6/10