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Speed Racer
Reviewed by Theo Michelfeld
Posted: May 11, 2008

A film's plot is not always what it's "about," and for a case in point, I direct your eye to the new film Speed Racer. From a storytelling standpoint, this movie is so childish, so meaningless, so emotionally and spiritually vacuous, that my instincts are to simply crush it with a few casual, hoity-toity paragraphs. At the same time, those same instincts realize that this film is not really about a kid whose first name is "Speed" and whose last name is "Racer," who drives gleaming sci-fi race cars on complicated sci-fi racetracks in order to overturn the corruption and corporate homogenization that has taken all the fun out of the sci-fi racing circuit. Folks, that's just the plot. What this movie is really about is color. And in that regard, it's positively ingenious.

It's true we are overrun, in this day and age, with dreadful films that look great. Speed Racer is essentially just another one of those. And no, there is no perspective, or vantage point, or upside-down universe, or alternate dimension, from which Speed Racer can be described as anything better than admirable. But what this film has to offer the human eye seems to me transcendent of the term "visual effects." Speed Racer saturates its audience with an expansive, vivid, warmly gaudy, dreamlike color palette that is simply rapturous to look at, in spite of everything else that takes place on screen. And the colors don't just sit there, reflecting light back from painted surfaces. No, they dance, float, collect into patterns, dissolve into motion blurs, and whirl into kaleidoscopes. It may sound like a drug experience, but not nearly as much as it looks like one, folks. Meanwhile, the Speed Racer experience is legal, and safe, and it won't make you say anything you'll regret later. (I say this knowing I may come to regret this review.) Anyway, the visual appeal of Speed Racer is not so much about a gimmick or a technique. Most empty-headed, good-looking movies don't age well because whatever they have going for them looks dated, or at least commonplace, five years later. But the colors in this movie are forever.

That said, if you are tempted now to see Speed Racer, you should be warned that although any given scene is amazing to behold, the whole shebang is almost impossible to endure. The plot, with the family, and the kid, and the monkey, and the girlfriend, and the brother, and the bad guy, and so on, is just obligatory filler. Did I say "monkey?" I'm thinking this animal was probably a chimpanzee. Anyway, the original Speed Racer cartoon from the 1960s featured a kid brother and a pet monkey, or chimpanzee, or what-have-you, that supposedly provided "comic relief" to the viewer, as if the rest of the show was oppressively somber. Now, a bit overly-faithful to the source material, the movie imposes these insufferable shenanigans on us all over again. It also wastes time with some slapstick kung-fu fight scenes, and there's some other b.s. about Speed Racer having to find himself on the racetrack. The truth is, the filmmakers themselves were completely bored with the Speed Racer story, and rather than trim it out, they just worked it into their ravishing color palette, and then foisted it all onto us. And so, instead of making something brilliant, timeless, and fifteen minutes long, they made something ludicrous, tedious, and endless.

Too bad, because Speed Racer is a visionary work of art. The creativity is undeniable, folks. If you accept the premise that movies are designed for the eyeballs, I suggest you indulge this one for a while when it comes to commercial television, and never mind all the dialogue and race cars and zany cartoon music bouncing incessantly around like pinballs. It won't be long before the colors work their magic. Let it in, folks. Let it feel good. And then turn the channel when you've had enough.

Copyright © 2008 Theo Michelfeld