Speed Racer

Races: Perfect spectacle, eyes are amazed, adrenaline rises and I grip the steering wheel subconsciously and step on the pedal. Dialogues, funny scenes, and the rest: Disappointment and often unexpected suffering. Parents try, my brother rolls his eyes, and Trixie, as a lovely sexy figure, winks her eyes and helps the main hero. And meanwhile, I pray for someone to step on that pedal again. It is truly a very uneven mixture, you climb into Speed's cockpit and you still don't get under his skin even for a bit throughout the two hours. And at that moment, any possible enthusiasm for the film as a whole ends for me. Visual orgy on a zero background. This is supposedly how films should look in the future. I think (and I strongly hope) not. P.S.: Big plus for the mysterious Matthew Fox, who can create a deep character out of anything. (31/05/2008)

A visual trip into the dimension of spilled colors and an absence of plot that perhaps only looks at family values and "sports" clichés. I’m not familiar with Japanese pop culture sources for manga comics, so after an hour and a half I was looking at the clock an unusual amount of times. Sure, it's new and unique and maybe someone will want to reference it now and then, but I don't think the Wachowskis are the kind of filmmakers suitable for family entertainment in which the children get lost and parents don't understand. While film theorists are feeling blissful, I find myself wondering how many balls the Wachowski brothers actually lost. The people at Warner were obviously on speed when they went into this, and they must have cried a lot over the 120 million. (12/09/2008)

The first twenty minutes I joyfully wallowed in its ingenuity, stylization and precision that the Wachowskis shower at you both horizontally and vertically. But then the same happens over and over for the rest of the movie. Here and there a wonderful moment occurs, but mostly you just get a chimp gawping out at you from the screen. And I don’t mean the excellent as always Hirsch. In my eyes it gradually devolves into the level of a far too long tripped out paint by numbers book that isn’t shaken out of its over-combined lethargy until the very end. Personally, I was expecting something different and more bizarre. This was, Speedy’s adventures make a traditional infantile family movie about the right values, with a pinch of insight into basic capitalism for the very young. So, certainly baloney, but not much fun. Still I would like to recommend this epileptic’s paradise because you really don’t get the chance to see something like this every day. And, last but not least, for that feeling of speed that the Wachowski siblings (can’t call them brothers, can I?) are so skilled at instilling. P.S.: That monkey in the pajamas has an unpleasantly penetrating gaze. I still have the feeling that somebody’s looking at me. Brr. (08/05/2008)

Beautifully kinetic, not only via movement on the screen, but also the movement around the story. Had I seen it as a child, my brain would have blown out of my nose. Anyway, it is elegant, funny, confidently told and poetically boyish with its pastel-manga-coloring book-family-chimpy style. Even the clichés that sometimes irritate me are completely smooth and high-octane in this cheeky injection. WW may be ahead of their time, or maybe they missed it completely, but to hell with the times, I watch movies and this one works better than any 3D prefabricated product. The added dimension of Speed Racer is probably the art of listening to a complex but completely effective machine for a simple story. Family movies have always bored me. Now I know why. None of them look like Speed Racer. (21/11/2012)

Brilliant! It’s a pity that the visionary visuals and direction of the Wachowskis is ruined by excessive childishness. I would throw the characters of the little brother and the chimp out of a skyscraper window, then I would scrape them from the street, bring them back up and throw them out again. But whatever, Speed Racer is an extraordinary and unique film and I can accept a couple of defects for all that beauty. (30/06/2011)