Speed Racer

So, I've finally had a chance to see the first three intended blockbusters of the 2008 summer season now that commencement is over. Of course, I'm saying intended, since Speed Racer has yet to break $40 million in its second weekend and Prince Caspian, which was expected to pull $80 million in its first weekend is "falling short," according to the blogs. Certainly, attendance out here in the hinters was sparse at all three films, though word is that Iron Man has legitimately earned the blockbuster label.

Let's take them in order, folks.

Given the brutal reviews Speed Racer was getting, I decided to hedge my bets and travel 90 minutes to the IMAX to see it. I was certainly taking a risk that five stories of Speed would be better than five feet of Speed on the local screen. And the Wachowskis have done interesting things with sound that attracted me to the larger experience, too.

Are the reviews right? Pretty much. Speed Racer is pitched at 10-year-old boys, and unlike the great kids films, it offers very little for the adult chaperone to chew on. The storytelling is muddled; character development is non-existent. Visually, the film is sometimes interesting and often headache inducing.

But the Wachowski brothers do interesting things and, flawed as Speed is, there are interesting things here. The film creates its own universe with its own rules. It doesn't rigidly follow its own rules, like, say, the Buffyverse, but it allows for curious things to happen. The visual style, that slips not so effortlessly back and forth into animation, keeps things moving (if not necessarily interesting).

The actors are reduced to cartoon characters, though generally with less depth. There's little opportunity for Emile Hersch (Speed), John Goodman (Pops) or Matthew Fox (Racer X) to do more than draw a passing familiarity to their animated selves. Any depth of character comes from our familiarity with the original cartoon. They're less wasted than irrelevant.

I could go through the plot, but it, too, is largely irrelevant. So what is relevant to the film. Largely, its the races. The animation is slick. The "Racerverse" has its own rules of gravity and geography that make the races is intriguing.

Mostly, though, there's far too little that is interesting or relevant in Speed Racer. It hardly invoked my fond memories of the cartoon I watched as a kid. It didn't bring out the sense of wonder in the kid that's inside me now. And it didn't even give me the adrenalin rush that even a bad Wachowski film usually does.