Movie review: Speed Racer

What's mega-colorful, faster than your X-Box on psychedelic steroids but comes to a screeching halt for campy dialogue? It's Speed Racer; enjoyable eye candy....and you can bring your little bro or sis along.

Speed Racer started in the 1960's as a popular animated TV series originating in Japan. You might have seen the re-runs on The Cartoon Network. The movie version goes like this:

Speed, yes, that's actually his name (Emile Hirsch), as a little kid, worshiped his top auto racer bro Rex (Scott Porter) who, later on, died in a crash during a cross-country race. As a young adult, Speed, following in older bro's footsteps, wins several races, attracting the greedy attention of big corporate race sponsors who try to entice him to be their boy. Racing is Speed's family business (dad, John Goodman, mom, Susan Sarandon and Speed's girlfriend Trixie, Christina Ricci, all join together to build cars and even park their prize Mach 5 racer in the living room!). So, he rejects the big corporate offer.

For bucking the evil sponsor, Speed is banned from most tracks and told that all races are rigged to drive up the price of tech stocks and sell cars and related goodies. Speed, taking the high road, holds his ground and sticks with his family race business as his sponsor. Racing Inspector Detector (Benno Furmann) tries to keep the sport clean and, uses as his good-guy-who-bends-the-laws enforcer Racer X (Matthew Fox of "Lost") to take out the bad guys on the track and off. Speed stays independent and on the right "track" and, with the help of the mysterious Racer X, family and friends, he goes out to win the biggest race of all.

Don't go to this film expecting a deep, broody, emotional Dark-Knight style hero whose story goes through mentally-torturous twists and turns. Although the plot does have one interesting twist, most of the turns are on the track. In fact, Speed Racer seems like two movies; one an adrenalin-injected head trip in super-saturated color, moving at the speed of light through impossible race action sequences on roller-coaster tracks and the other, a story with talking head "personal" scenes where mom sits down and speaks earnestly to son, dad talks to son about loyalty and Speed, as boyfriend, relaxes in his parked car at make-out point and...talks to girlfriend (Hey, it's a PG movie!).

At the heart of the film, resides family unity, loyalty and love vs. corporate greed and we toss in a tale of rivals coming together for the greater good. Cute Japanese mega-pop-star Rain makes a feisty racer nemesis for Speed. It is gratifying to see that the Trixie character holds her own with the guys; flying a helicopter, driving a race and kicking martial arts butt next to her man while still keeping her cute, femme persona going full steam. Dialogue is very comic-booky and camp. Speed actually tosses out tongue-twisters like "Inspector Detector suspected foul play" and people say things like "hubba hubba" and "Gosh Wow".

Speed Racer is a film for the whole family, with some occasionally annoying comic relief for the younger kiddies provided by the youngest Racer kid Spritle and his pet chimp Chim Chim (both characters come from the original TV series). It is also quite long at over two hours but, there are times when your eyes will be glued to the screen, the color, the amazing roller-coaster style races, wild gadgetry and action. There is just enough plot, especially the angst of Matthew Fox's interesting Racer X character, to hold older teens' interest while your little bro or sis will be often mesmerized as if thumbing through a very colorful, moving comic book.

For innovative style, fast-paced action and an out-of-this world "look", 3 out of 5 stars

***

Lynn Barker is a Hollywood-based entertainment journalist and produced screenwriter.