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Speed Racer

05/10/2008 05:00 AM

By: Neil Rosen, Entertainment Weekly

The Wachowski brothers, who gave the world the Matrix films and V for Vendetta have decided to go another way for their latest movie. It's a big screen version of a 1960's Japanese cartoon and it's called Speed Racer.

Emile Hirsh plays Speed, a top flight race car driver. His father Pops Racer, played by John Goodman, has designed Speed's thundering race car, the Mach 5 and his whole family which includes mom, Susan Sarandon, little brother and even pet chimp are on board for Speeds adventures.

But something crooked is going on in the world of racing Speed discovers that a manipulative tycoon is up to no good, defacing the good name of racing. So with the help of his one-time racing rival, played by Matthew Fox and his girlfriend, played by Christina Ricci, it's up to Speed to set things right.

If only this movie were cool. It's not. In fact the words over-produced and boring are more appropriate here.

Neil Rosen reviews Speed Racer

The Wachowski's have used a tremendous amount of green screen and digital animation. Nothing looks real, which is OK, if you were involved, on any level, in any of the races on screen. But you won't really care what's going on in this movie at all. The plot is very confusing, the dialogue is childlike and the action jumps around so much you'll often be lost.

This is a classic case of style over substance. Some may say that from a visual perspective, it looks good and it does, but it doesn't really matter if I don't care one iota what happens to any of the characters.

The whole experience is like watching someone else play a bad car racing video game. It's a visual assault and I was embarrassed for some of these first rate actors to be in this production and have to recite some of this ridiculous dialogue.

Perhaps young kids aged six to nine might get some sort of thrill out of this for a few minutes, but for everyone else on the planet, run at top speed away from this one.

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