(Insert stupid Blog name here) - Summer Full 'o Movies pt. 1 - Speed Racer

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It's Summertime! And for the first time in years, there are a number of movies I'm planning to go see this Summer. Usually I may see only one, perhaps two movies a year.

 

So, let's run 'em down, shall we?

 

Iron Man - Review coming soon... I haven't seen this one yet.

Speed Racer - Review coming real soon... the rest of this entry, in fact.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - Rumor has it Sean Connery will make a cameo as Harrison Ford's son.

King Fu Panda - Ick. Not sure I can drag myself to this one or not. Maybe if I can get reimbursed from work for "research".

Wall•E - The latest trailers are looking good. Another Pixar winner?

The Dark Knight - I liked the franchise reboot with the last film (and hated all of the previous installments). Can they stay on the right track?

 

Some movies I won't be seeing:

 

The Incredible Hulk - No, they didn't get it right this time, either.

Get Smart - Blasphemy! There was only one Maxwell Smart. R.I.P., Don Adams.

Hancock - Another film where Will Smith plays... Will Smith.

Space Chimps - Not. Even. At. Gunpoint.

 

So, on to the first film... Speed Racer

 

Oh, and these are Spoiler-Free™ reviews. So feel free to read on safe in the knowledge that I won't be spilling any critical beans.

 

Back in July of last year, I posted about Speed Racer, and what it would take to make it a successful adaptation. Let's see how we did...

 

The car stunts will be mostly CG. Given the original cartoon show, really, this is the only way they could be done. I just hope they get it right. They don't have to be necessarily realistic, but they have to establish believable physics for the world the story takes place in, and then stick with it. The most important thing will be in making the cars feel heavy. That's one thing that is very difficult to do in CG.

Well, the cars never felt heavy. But the filmmakers did establish their world at the outset, and stuck with it throughout the film, and it worked. It's one of those things you either buy into at the outset, or you don't. I did. Although I would've like a little more weight to it all. 1 point.

Drum solo fight scenes. Almost every episode had a fight scene between Speed and the bad guys, while a drum solo was playing.

Fight scene (with music) yes. Drum solo, no. But the fight scene was very much in keeping with the original series. So I'll give that one to them. One point.

Dramatic music freeze-frame. Near the beginning of most episodes (usually during the flashback portion of a two-parter) they'd freeze frame on a piece of action, while dramatic music played. This is a must!

Not really, although there were a few slow-motiony Matrix-type scenes which could count towards it. Half-point for trying.

"Oooooohhh!" Speed has to yell this at least once in the movie, while the Mach 5 is spinning out. Or falling into a chasm.

Half-point. I think there was one part where he was spinning and yelling, but it was kind of hard to tell (and Racer-X was yelling "SPEED!!" so that helps). But it could have been more pronounced.

Sound effects from the series. How can you have Speed Racer without those engine sounds, or the "chyukchyukchyukchyuk" of the jacks as the Mach 5 jumps over something?

The jacks sound effects was there, which was eminently satisfying. The engine sounds could have been better, but they worked. 1 point.

Cool cars. They got the Mach 5 right, but the other cars in the race(s) can't just be generic cars. They have to be designed. Speed can't be racing against Corvettes or something recognizable. They must be custom.

Well, they were custom. But the designs were so busy-looking (corporate sponsor logos everywhere - which figure into the plot of the film) it was really hard to see what they really looked like, apart from Racer X's and Speed's cars. Half point.

A villain car. There has to be a main car for Speed to beat in the "big race". Nothing, I repeat nothing would be cooler than to have the Car Acrobatic team in the film.

No Car Acrobatic team, but Snake Oiler (of the CA team) is in the film. Plus, the final rival car is named after one of the more infamous cars from the series. So we'll give them a point for that, despite the previously mentioned design issues.

The saws. Yes - somewhere in the film, as ridiculous as they are, the Mach 5 must sprout its giant rotary saw blades, and mow down a forest. Or a wheat field. Or a herd of deer. Or a Cub Scout troop. Or just slam into a tree at 180 MPH, and have the things just break off, and Speed say, "What was Pops thinking?!"

Saws are there. No carnage, but they're still cool. 1 point.

Stilted dialog - like the cheesy overdubbing in the original series. At least for one of the characters. Like Inspector Detector (who is, thankfully, in the film). It's a tradition.

Does intentionally cheesy writing count? Nope. Zero points.

Spritle and Chim-Chim must get into the trunk of the Mach 5. And get a concussion from being bounced around. Seriously. We've been waiting for that for almost 40 years.

Trunk yes, concussion, no. But still 1 point.

An awesome video game tie-in. C'mon... this is the chance to finally give us the game we've always wanted. Besides, now they actually make game controllers with enough buttons to drive the Mach 5.

Haven't played it yet but... it appears you can only drive the Mach 6. Zero points, until I get to drive the Mach 5.

 

So, that comes to a rather odd 7 1/2 out of 11.

 

Not actually the rating I'm going to give the film, but close.

 

As for the actual review... I enjoyed the film. Bottom line, that's what it's about. I thought the visuals were amazing (and innovative), the races were cool, and some of the characters were fun. I think some of the acting could have gone more over the top. Speed seemed a little flat, and John Goodman pretty-much phoned in his part, as did Susan Sarandon (I always saw them as themselves - never as the characters, except once with John Goodman as Pops). But Spritle was a lot of fun (and not the annoying "please kill him now" little twerp of the series), Racer-X was cool, Royalton (the main baddie) obviously had a lot of fun with his part, as did Trixie. Some of the other characters were wasted though - particularly Taejo, Sparky, Cruncher Block and Inspector Detector. A lot more could have been done with them. Some of the accents of the actors threw me off too, and made it very difficult to understand some of the dialogue.

 

Ah yes... the dialogue. There's a fair amount of it in this film. Some say there's "too much plot". Maybe. But if you really watch the original episodes, that's what they're like. There's a fair amount of backstory to them, mainly because of two reasons: 1) Many of the stories started out as Manga and 2) Talking heads are cheaper to animate than car races. So the movie's plot didn't bother me, although it certainly could have been simplified (more Wachowski over-verbosism). But even that seemed to be intentional, as there's one scene where Royalton is spelling out all of the corruption in racing and why it's happened, and it becomes so ludicrous, it almost had to have been a joke. The rest of the dialogue isn't going to win any Oscars, but it does fit in with the film. If it was "good" dialogue, it would be out of place with the visuals.

 

There are nice nods to the series throughout - some character names (Cruncher Block, Snake Oiler), location names, a sort-of Mammoth Car, the way fight scenes are staged, Spritle and Chim-Chim's obsession with candy and getting into mischief, some of the Mach 5's special gadgets, and a self-conscious "wholesome, goody-goody" feel to the whole Racer family. It's all tongue-in-cheek, and if you go into it knowing that, it works. If you think they're serious about it, you're missing the point. Oddly enough, for all their desire to make a "family" film, there is some mild profanity, a little bit of blood, and a quick middle-finger that all seem out of place. Maybe they were trying to avoid a G rating. Still, I think some of the car crashes might have been enough to warrant a PG without the rest. Maybe I'm just being naive.

 

Without giving anything major away (and you'd know this from the trailers/commercials) there's a Mach 6 in the film. At first, I considered this to be akin to blasphemy. But the Mach 5 is in the film, and runs the most interesting race of the film (and the one most in keeping with the series). I do wish there'd been more of that kind of racing. Still, the other races were cool in their own way, and the reason for the different cars made perfect sense. (And in the series, Speed used different cars in different races as well.)

 

The structure of the film is really interesting. It mixes flashbacks, flash-forwards, and the present all together, and it does so very well. I did get a little lost once, but only for a scene or two until I figured out when in the movie we were at again (which happened to be the present).

 

The visuals are stunning. I wouldn't recommend seeing the film if you're prone to seizures, however. But it's not completely overwhelming all the time. It's an interesting mix of live-action-anime and racing videogames (like SF Rush 2049). It's quite unlike anything I've ever seen, at least on a feature film level. The closest comparison I could probably make would be Tron, although I consider Tron to be a very different film. The car races look really cool, although at times the editing is so fast and the camera movements so rapid, it's hard to really see what's happening. You get more of an impression of what's happening. Maybe that was the intent. I actually think this film would look better on DVD, where the screen didn't take up your entire field of vision. (I can only imagine how overwhelming the effect would be in IMAX.) I've seen this in other effects-heavy movies recently, and I think it has to do with creating movies entirely on the desktop. You don't have a cinematographer there, telling you how to frame scenes. So you frame them based on what you see in the monitor in front of you, and it makes the world smaller and more manageable. It's easier to see faster edits and motion and everything else at once on a computer monitor. I wonder if they check the effects in a full-sized screening room before putting the final film together? It's like home video and videogames meet filmmaking. I'd say that would be my biggest knock against the film - I wanted to see what was happening better than I was able to. I consider that a good thing in a way, since it means I was into the movie. But sometimes it was sensory overload, and it took me a few minutes after the film was over to kind-of digest it all.

 

The music is excellent, with a solid score by Michael Giacchino (The Incredibles), with nice chunks of the Speed Racer theme sprinkled throughout at appropriate points. It would have been nice to have had even more of the original series' signature music (such as the aforementioned drum solo fight scene), but the music worked well throughout the film. Good sound effects, but more of the unique effects from the series would have been welcomed.

 

The movie was longer than I expected it to be. I didn't note the running time before going in, so I was surprised when it clocked in at over two hours. It didn't particularly feel that long, although some little kids in the (nearly empty) theater certainly got restless. I suspect that the fact that it's way over the typical 90 minute kiddie fare is what's keeping parents from bringing their kids to it. (That, and the generally terrible press reviews.) The box office this past weekend wasn't exactly stellar for an opening (coming in third place) and it's only going to get worse as Narnia 2 and Indy 4 open up over the next two weeks. Expect this one to hit the smaller screens fast. If you're going to see it, better do it this week.

 

If you're a fan of Speed Racer, or cars, (or Cars), or racing videogames, or just really cool looking movies, I'd recommend it. I enjoyed it, and I'm considering seeing it again, although at $10.50 a pop, I may save my money for some of the other movies on my list. It was well-worth seeing though. I'd even like to see a sequel... but the reality of it is: this is a niche film. Despite the wealth of potential stories from the series, I can't see Warner Bros. sinking $120 million into another one of these, unless it does well overseas or on home video.

 

My cartoon-addled brain gives this one an 8/10. It's one of those films you either get or don't. If you get it, you'll like it. If you don't, you'll hate it. There's no middle ground here.

 

Go Speed, Go!

 

(And incidentally -

I've seen posted to YouTube. Enjoy! )

 

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