In the years of psychedelic anime in the 60’s there was no name bigger than speed racer [He’s a demon wheels you know] with all of the exciting races, quizzical humor, and expositional dialogue. This new retread by the Wachowski brothers is one of the most entertaining summer movies I have ever seen behind Iron man. It’s brilliant, frenzied, and mind blowing tone is just like the certain anime it is based on which was probably exactly what they were aiming to achieve. The story is about Speed Racer, a young ambitious race car driver who has an eccentric encouraging family behind him. When Speed turns down a lucrative deal from royal industries he uncovers a dangerous secret that only he and his family must stop to protect the purity of the sport of race car driving. The directing and writing is amazing with an out of control new narrative style that was confusing at first but when things got going and as the audience you just go with it the narrative blends cohesively with the whole movie. Every actor and actress is pitch perfect with the voices and movements their character performed on the television show. Especially Emile Hirsch is great playing the simple minded ambitious naive title character that has the drive to be as great as his late older brother was at racing. The key to this film is the organic colorful zany visual effects that is apparent in every frame and gives the movie its anime style.
There are some scenes where my jaw was dropped down to the bottom of the popcorn bucket from all the creative racing scenes.


The aerodynamics of the cars fighting each other in mid air while many explosions are going on around them is like nothing I have ever seen before. Even the over the top music, humor and costumes fit the story and the visuals in the movie. This is an amazing piece of work because it is a very a different, odd, film that does not play for the mainstream audience because it goes in many fanatical paths that summer movies never go. There are two major problems with this movie that make it a little hard to watch. The absurd length is so long that makes it very slow in parts which it did not need to be if the movie was 90 minutes than 135 minutes. Bottom Line – The story, tone, races, and writing is absolutely manic. A little long but just let it take over you and you will have a time you will never forget. A entertaining guilty pleasure.

Tags: Summer Movie Review