Burnt Rubber

"Watch out, Speed- there's inane plotting and flashing lights up ahead!"  (Film Review)

by Michael Sean McGowan

The Upside: If you've ever wanted to know what a Crayola-influenced LSD trip would be like.

The Downside:  Go?  No!

    Here is the definitive proof that the Wachowski brothers are way too smart for their own good.  Sure, dropping little pieces of philosophical musing into FX blockbusters like The Matrix may have made some sense- or at least the nuggets of Nietzsche or the presence of Cornell West may have at least lent it a veneer of quasi-respectability, but somewhere in the planning stages of Speed Racer the rubber left the road and if you've seen the trailers and are thinking this is one schizophrenic film visually, then you haven't seen anything yet.  In resurrecting the kitschy Manga serial from the 1960s, the Wachowskis have decided to cut ranks from common sense and keep every piece of garish color palette, Leave It To Beaver dialogue (who says "Gee whiz!" anymore?), and prepubescent humor and have created a film that no matter the age of the person watching, guarantees that they'll be suspecting it's meant for someone a few years shy of themselves. 

    So if the brothers are, perhaps, reliving a pop culture fantasy from their childhood, why did they make Speed Racer look like a toy commercial on crack and sound like Kurt Eichenwald was brought in to doctor the script?  The low-down isn't very demanding- zoom-zoom kid Speed (as in, Speed Racer.  Get it?), following in his family's footsteps with their love of cars and other things that go fast, eventually realizes his dream of racing at 800 mph on labyrinthed metal tracks.  Speed is so good, in fact, that he draws the attention of a shady corporate tycoon named Royalton (as I said, not very demanding) played by Roger Allam.  When Speed rejects Royalton's overtures of the fastest cars and faster money, he makes a powerful enemy and so plays out a tale with very simple touchstones such as no man is poor who has  family and perseverance and honesty always win the day.  Pretty harmless stuff- the kind that would come out of a cartoon, so I couldn't do anything but shake my head when the subplots involving rigged stock prices and corporate espionage involving an on-the-take racer (played by Korean pop star Rain- or as Stephen Colbert might say, "Raaaiiiinnnn!!!") and a shadowy figure known as Racer X (Lost's Matthew Fox) whose idea of investigating white collar crime involves racing around Speed Racer's brightly painted tracks very fast.  I can't say this is where Speed Racer lost me- I was a lost cause long before this- but it shows that for one of the most ADHD movies in recent memory that its attention deficit isn't just limited to visual overstimulation.  So much of Speed Racer speaks to the Wachowskis trying to channel their inner rugrats that I can't figure why they weighed their own testimonial down with a story their audience wouldn't care about, much less understand. 

    There's more than the tug-of-war between brainy and brainless going on here.  Walking out of Speed Racer I didn't want to review it, I wanted to write it a prescription for Ritalin.  There's something to be said for the technical genius of the Wachowskis because the green screen work here is a wow, or it could be if the movie slowed down enough to let us see it.  But Speed Racer is a collective onslaught of light, color, fast movement and quick cuts that could induce epileptic seizures in the likes of Michael Bay or Stephen Sommers.  This jazz blows the doors off any semblance of continuity or coherency, killing the movie with a thousand cuts as it either jumps back and forth between timelines or (most headache-inducing) by reducing its racing set-pieces into loud slide shows of cars spinning out or clanging into each other.

    Speed Racer may work as a technician's piece, but there's more craft than inspiration on that end of the spectrum, too.  The movie's color scheme, pastels and primaries a-plenty indicative of the simple harmony of the Racer home is vintage Edward Scissorhands-esque Tim Burton and the frenetic mechanical chaos (it almost looks like hi-tech stop motion) is none too influenced by Robert Rodriguez's Spy Kids movies.  The Matrix films were never accused of having too much heart, and even they owed plenty to the libraries of William Gibson and John Woo, however the Wachowskis were at least able to hide the foundation under a cool and original story.  Speed Racer may be an odd turn- how the most above-it and reclusive figures in Hollywood sold out by taking a commercial property and never giving it a lift above their shoulders.

    For all of its endearances for fake warmth and brightness, Speed Racer isn't particularly personable.  Emile Hirsch (as Speed) never quite fits in with the bleach-white racing duds he has to endure for much of the film, and this isn't helped by remembering how good he was playing another rogue with different family issues in Into the Wild.  Worse yet is Christina Ricci who's been plied into the role of Pixie, Speed's girlfriend who shares her crush's affinity for painfully monochromatic outfits.  Ricci excels so well at playing darkness both comedic (The Addams Family) and not (Ghost World) that putting her into a role with nothing more to do than smile and look bright-eyed sounds like a painful practical joke.  About the only real chemistry comes from the seasoned professionals, Susan Sarandon and John Goodman as Speed's loving Mom and Pop who manage an authenticity that keeps the Major Life Lessons from becoming completely cloying.

    No small number of people were wondering where the Wachowski brothers were going to go next, after having revolutionized digital filmmaking with The Matrix but having gone out on an unsatisfying note with Matrix Revolutions.  Maybe this is a strange addendum to the concept of the sophomore slump, but I doubt few would have guessed they'd pour themselves into a project designed to be marketed to an age group who still like juice and crackers during nap time.  Because of this, Speed Racer is almost a guaranteed flop- too chaotic and self-important for the Toys R Us set, too gaudy and silly for everyone else.  Maybe one day the Wachowski's will make something that'll hint to the same shrewdness that led them to The Matrix, but as for Speed Racer, it is not The One.  C