All I know is that when I was watching Speed Racer in the theater, it felt like my eyeballs were getting raped.
But hey, the movie is for kids, right? It’s based on a kid’s cartoon, right? That’s great, except both of my kids (eight and ten) fell asleep during the matinee showing. I’m not going to bother picking this one up.
“Fuck Star Wars” is always in style; “Fuck Metacritic” is reserved for “7-9 scale” rants. Didn’t you get the memo?
My working theory is that Dave Long was savagely satirized as a child, leaving him with near-intractable emotional scars. Subsequently he’s endeavored to stake out out a series of positions so absurd that they effectively render him immune from being mocked in that regard. If indeed that is his plan, I must commend Dave not only for its brilliance, but also his tenacity in seeing it through.
Finally saw it last night. I figured, giving my usually low standards, I would find something to enjoy.
No, just no.
It was so terrible and I liked the original Speed Racer cartoon. I wanted to like the movie. I really did but I couldn’t find one redeeming feature.
I also wonder where the $120 million to make this movie went? There were effect shots that were worse than the typical Spy Kids movie.
You know what? I watched it expecting it to suck, and I didn’t get into it at first, but I’ll be damned if it hadn’t managed to win me over by the end.
I thought this would be horrible, and for a kids movie it isn’t too bad.
SPEED RACER:
Damned with faint praise!
I saw this yesterday as well. I think it could have lost the first 20 minutes and been a much better movie. I thought it found it’s stride about half way and wasn’t nearly the train wreck I thought it would be.
This is pretty much my take on it. (Arise, thread, arise!) I saw it on BluRay, where it looked spectacular, if occasionally too busy and fond of fancy camerawork. I was kind of surprised to get into the races, since races are not in any way my thing as a general rule. This would be one reason why I never saw the original anime…I hadn’t quite realized how apparently ridiculous it is, and had it pegged more in with, say, those mangas about Go and basketball and such which I’ve never bothered with. So as a non-anime fan I was deeply mystified by the presence of the chimp, and also Trixie’s residing with Speed’s family, and suchlike. But while I did find the little brother and the chimp irritating and could have done without the first 10-15 minutes of the movie, by the end I was solidly entertained.
It’s not complex, it’s not logical, and it’s not even particularly smart…but it’s occasionally got some real emotion behind it and the sheer goofiness of a lot of it won me over quite. Bee catapults, piranha tanks in semi-trailer lounges, ninjas and all.
The movie is considerably more ridiculous than the original series as written, but is not much more ridiculous than the original series as dubbed for US television, if that makes any sense. That said, the sort of action in most episodes Speed Racer remains pretty subdued compared to the heights of excess the movie hits. The movie seems to have taken its inspiration from all the most over-the-top beats the series ever hit.
Speed Racer is definitely not best categorized as a “competition” manga (in part, it was written for television and the Speed Racer manga was IIRC adapted from the TV show). Like a lot of the early Tatsunoko productions, it was inspired by US 60’s pop culture adventure shows and was written kind of in the mold of the genre stories that also inspired Johnny Quest. That genre has pretty much died off in the US although you still see it quite a bit in anime and to a lesser extent-- in my experience, anyway-- in manga.
Necro’ing this thread for the 10th anniversary of Speed Racer!
My son and I watched this again on Friday night, and it was just as wonderful as I remembered. Besides maybe Scott Pilgrim, I can’t think of another movie with the same sense of style. Incredible!
This is, may I remind you, a movie where one car is doing a flip over another car, and the other driver launches his car into the air and punches the first driver. That should have earned it an Oscar right there!
It is easily among my favorite movies of all time. I get even more enamored of it with repeated viewing. It’s a beautiful recreation of the show with a modern flare in “live” action.
Few films are so respectful of their source material while being so incredibly original in bringing a visual feast to the screen.
Also, thanks for bringing back one of the threads that made me quit this site before. 😞
Good god I love this fuckin movie. It’s ludicrously fun and gorgeous. Hate the kid and the monkey, but everything else is just perfect.
I would give them a rather large sum of my own money if it helped that film get made. I can’t even imagine what they’d be able to do with modern technology in a sequel. Wow.
Yeah, I would back a Kickstarter for that at an unreasonable and financially ill advised level without any hesitation.
I discovered that Susan Sarandon has a majestic rack from this movie.
You must not have see The Hunger, then.
“Are you trying to seduce me, Mrs. Blaylock?”
I would back a crowdfunded Speed Racer sequel.
You guys are making me want to watch this. I remember being interested in it when it was released since it looked so different than everything else coming out then (in that it wasn’t all greyscale and super-serious), but then I read the reviews, lost interest, and it faded from my memory. I was never a fan of the TV show though, but I doubt that matters. Looks like it’s on Netflix.