My Review of Speed Racer, or, WHERE THE HECK IS THE MACH 5???

Whenever filmmakers adopt properties famous in other media (comics, cartoons) into live action films, they are pretty much caught in the devil's alternative. Should they attempt to be faithful to the source material, thereby ensuring that the built-in audience of fans of the property in the alternate media will be satisfied, but run the risk of alienating viewers who may be less familiar with the source material? Should they jettison some aspects of the varied history of said pop culture property, keeping the essentials intact and make a story faithful to the underlying ideas of the property? Or should the filmmakers be COMPLETELY faithful to the point of serving the underlying source material to the point where, in their zeal to perfectly replicate the environments and "feel" of the source material, they sacrifice story and forget about what really made the source material special in the first place?

Unfortunately, Speed Racer falls into the latter trap, and IMAX could not save it. I went to see the movie with Eddie, my brother, and another pair of friends at the IMAX. Of the people who were there, I can attest that only my brother and I were well versed in the history and story background of Speed Racer. We knew what the film SHOULD be about, and perhaps this made us much harsher critics than we should be. From the blindingly colorful spectacle of the first race until the predictable finale, I was most impressed with how the Wachowski brothers had painstakingly recreated the world of a colorful anime program through their generous use of green screen-based CGI. The colors just seemed to pop from the oversized screen of the IMAX and overwhelm the senses. It was our world-but not. The special effects and music were perfectly matched to the story of Speed Racer, so the story should be slam dunk solid right?

Unfortunately, this was not the case. The film, which clocks in at close to 2.5 hours, was overlong by at least 30 minutes (maybe more). In their zeal to include so much from Speed's vast history and in their quest to cram every bit of CGI into every frame, the Wachowski's forgot about basic story pacing and dialogue. There were many painful moments where I felt as if I were listening to the stilted dialogue from the Star Wars prequels (yes, Emile Hirsch even sounded, at moments, like Hayden Christiansen-but even WORSE). It was as if someone were off screen showing Hirsch the cue cards for him to read. With the exception of John Goodman's Pops Racer, every single actor in the film really let me down. Remember what I said in my review of Iron Man that any filmmaker who tries to adapt something need not change everything about the property in order to make it a success? I was really struck by how Favreau had adhered to the Iron Man mythos without having to "Hollywoodize" it. Speed Racer had the opposite problem-TOO MUCH verisimilitude. The story should have been tighter and need not have included so many expository scenes that did nothing to establish character motivations, plot, etc.
The true impact of how the Wachowskis "just didn't get" came to me two hours after leaving the theater. I went to the suburbs to test drive some cars with my brother (a fitting denouement to a day that began with Speed Racer). While staring at an Aston Martin DB9 and thinking of how Aston Martins had become synonymous with Bond, the most glaring issue in the entire film clarified itself, and I realized that the film missed the mark completely with me.

THE MACH 5 WAS NOT FRONT AND CENTER!!!!!



Any true Speed Racer fan would tell you that the star of the original source anime and manga was not any of the human (or simian, for that matter) characters. It was the Mach 5-the coolest car ever in the history of animation (yes, this includes the various incarnations of the Batmobile-funny how I always come back to that). During the first 1/2 of the film, the Mach 5 is a non-entity, a cool "almost makeout" car for Speed that seemed to be there solely because it had the requisite trunk space for Spritle and Chim-Chim's famous stowaways. When Inspector Detector and his team of scientists got their hands on the Mach 5 prior to Speed's rally race, my interest in the movie, which had been waning, was quickly piqued, and the film had me again, The rally scenes with the Mach 5 were great, as they allowed the Mach 5 a showcase for its amazing gadgetry. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a big tease. The rally was short, and more time was spent on a lame mass kung-fu scene than on the race itself, Just as quickly as it arrived, the Mach 5 receded into the background. For the grand finale race, Pops announced "but you don't have a car." I felt like screaming from the seats "YOU HAVE THE FREAKING MACH 5, YOU FAT FOOL! THE COOLEST CAR IN THE HISTORY OF CARTOONS! USE IT! USE IT, I SAY!" Unfortunately, Pops built the completely lame Mach 6, and I was denied again. The Mach 5 never made another appearance in the film. The omission of the true star of the Speed Racer series, the Mach 5, was what made the film a loser in my eyes. I mean, IT IS IN THE FREAKING THEME SONG for the cartoon, as illustrated by these 2 lines from the opening theme song:

He's gaining on you so you'd better look alive
He's busy revvin' up the powerful MACH 5 (emphasis)

Heck...Mach 6 doesn't even RHYME with "alive", now does it? Oh well. So the first turkey of the summer is here, and as they did with the final 2 Matrix films, the Wachowski brothers completely snowed me with cool trailers. I can now understand Eddie's aversion to trailers. Much has also been made of this film as being the perfect family film. Well, if your perfect family film experience includes viewing a man being pummeled by mob heavies, profanity, an attempt to feed a man to a tank of piranha as he screams in defiance, the loss of a finger to said piranhas by another man, and an obscene gesture by young Spritle, then this IS a family film. Otherwise, keep your kids away from this movie.

One final note. There were some major annoyances provided by a school class that was here no doubt on the dime of Chicago taxpayers. As with most school trips, there appeared to be one chaperon for every 40 kids, and the kids could not sit still for any appreciable amount of time. That in itself would not be so bad, but when most of the children are constantly moving back and forth in front of me and my friends during the film itself, and where the space between the seats in the IMAX is not generous by any stretch of the imagination, and where the kids could be poster children for America's childhood obesity epidemic..well, you get my point. I thought that they distracted from my enjoyment of the film, but I cannot blame them. The film had enough faults in it such that the kids may have distracted me from noticing even more things wrong.

All I can say is thank God for Iron Man. I might have to see Iron Man again just to wipe out the experience of Speed Racer. As much as I was hoping for a sequel to Iron Man, I am hoping that Warner Brothers will let Speed Racer rest in Cartoon Network heaven.