Emile as Speed Racer Credit: Warner Bros.

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.