Speed Racer - 1 frown

One might think that a movie written and directed by the Wachowski brothers (“The Matrix”) would be good. However, Andy and Larry fail to follow a fundamental rule in making a movie with a lot of computer-generated special effects: the effects must support the story. (See “Iron Man” for an effective application of this principle.) Instead of starting with a meaningful narrative and strong characters, the Wachowskis periodically trap you in a psychedelic car race, which swirls around like a kaleidoscopic video game gone bad and then spits you out for your next dose of dialogue.

Based on a 40-year old Japanese cartoon, the movie is about Speed Racer (Emile Hirsch), a young race car driver who comes to the attention of big business mogul Royalton (Roger Allam), who wants Speed to race for him. And Royalton is not above fixing races to get what he wants. That’s pretty much the plot and the movie might have been better if the Wachowskis had left it at that. Instead they throw in perplexing flashbacks about Speed’s older brother Rex (Scott Porter); vague conversations about art and business and racing for the love of racing and racing for money; silly antics from Speed’s younger brother Spritle (Paulie Litt) and his chimpanzee; and the mysterious comings and goings of Racer X (Matthew Fox). ‘Throw in’ is the operative word here so a coherent story is impossible. On paper, the cast of “Speed Racer” is strong: Hirsh, Fox, John Goodman and Susan Sarandon (Speed’s parents), and Christina Ricci (Trixi, Speed’s girlfriend). But this is a movie about racing and the script leaves little room for character development.

Skip “Speed Racer.” It’s overly long (134 minutes) and talky and the redundant race sequences have so much CG glitz that it’s hard to know who’s winning. The intended audience for this movie is obviously 6-10-year-old boys; however, for their parents and any other sentient adult, it’s pretty awful. (5/11/08)