Seriously. I found it to be a fun, entertaining movie. The racing action is a little fast at times, but is great at others (all the gadgets and more besides show up) and it’s completely over top in the best and most thematically appropriate way. I quite like Hirsch as Speed, Ricchi as Trixie, Goodman and Sarandon as the parents, Racer X (SPOILERS DUH DUH DUH), and the villains. Very enjoyable. When I have access to movie channels and I am browsing for something to watch or put on in the background, it gets pretty good priority in terms of being on the TV. And of course if it’s on in the background I have to stop and watch at times.
I thought it was better than critics gave it credit for, and a lot of fun.
I thought the movie was pretty boring. But I’m not that familiar with the original cartoon, so I was probably missing some kind of nostalgia factor that would help to enjoy the movie.
Yeah it’s hard to communicate that some of the effects shots were intentionally unrealistic to evoke a certain style, instead of trying to be photorealistic and accurate. They would use 3D elements composited on top of each other in weird ways, combined with matte paintings for the backgrounds instead of actual 3D backgrounds. I guess it didn’t work for some people. It totally worked for me.
I watched this over two nights since it was about 45 minutes longer than I was expecting. The cast was good, and it looked seriously great throughout, but the first half had too much li’l brother and chimpanzee shenanigans for my taste. It became consistently entertaining once the cross-country rally started and all the subsequent action sequences were varying degrees of excellent. By the end, I found myself enjoying it much more than I expected. I am absolutely down for a sequel, but I don’t know who would give the Wachowskis that kind of budget anymore.
Aw, hot off responding to the Solo thread where I was bemoaning the executive boot, you guys bring up ‘Jupiter Ascending’. Reminds me a bit of this passage from Wired [about Valerian]:
Otherwise, it’s another Jupiter Ascending, a singular directorial vision applied to a highly designed sci-fi epic that just plain sucked. Besson wrote the script, pored meticulously over the production designs, and directed it in his usual painstaking way. […] That means no blaming studio executive notes for the final product. This is what unfettered creative output looks like—for better or worse.
