'Speed Racer' Engaging, But It's A Very Long Race

'Speed Racer'

By ROGER MOORE | ORLANDO SENTINEL

May 9, 2008

"Here he comes; here comes Speed Racer. He's a demon on wheels."

Well, a PG-rated "demon," anyway. The Wachowski Brothers dove into the Chocolate Factory for this hunk of eye candy. Their homage to the violent, dopey, under-animated and yet oh-so-fondly remembered 1960s Japanese children's cartoon is a loving one, and not nearly the 27-car pile-up one might have feared. It just takes too long to get us to the checkered flag.

"Speed Racer" is a dazzling Day-Glo toy commercial with cute characters, super futuristic cars, cartoonish villains... and guns, torture and a smattering of gratuitous profanity. Which is to say it's a kids' movie as imagined by the team who made "The Matrix" trilogy and "Bound." Not quite "kiddie," not exactly "edgy" either.

In a delightful first act, we meet the very young Speed (Nicholas Elia), middle son of the Racer family. He can't keep his mind on schoolwork. He's all about cars, the car building business dad ( John Goodman) runs, the World Racing League "Mach 5" his brother Rex (Scott Porter) competes with. Rex teaches Speed everything he knows, which is one lesson: "Stop steering and start driving." And then Rex is gone, killed in a road rally accident that scars the family.

Cut to the twentysomething Speed, now played with gee-whiz earnestness by Emile Hirsch ("Into the Wild"). He's true to his girl, Trixie ( Christina Ricci, cast against type and funny). He's racing against a ghost, that of his dead brother. He's a good big brother to goofy young Spritle (Paulie Litt) and their pet chimp, Chim Chim.

And he's pure of heart and motive. Speed wants to win the WRL championship, take the Grand Prix and do it without the corrupting influence of the big manufacturing Cartel.

Roger Allam plays the oily chief of Royalton, a company that wants to corner the market on the fuel-cell gadgets that run the cars. He courts Speed and turns on him when Speed rebuffs his advances.

Thus, does our heroic driver dash off to the deadly, ultra-cool Hot Wheels tracks and race car roller-coasters that comprise the WRL's season. The cars are retro-futuristic bullets that can bounce out of danger as they slide through turns, climb walls and weave through deadly pylons. Though intentional wrecking and explosive wipeouts are a big part of this sport (Speed is a little less sadistic than his competition), crashes often end with air bag-like-bubbles puffing up around the driver, saving him or her from injury. The races in this are strobing blurs of light and color, a vexing delight to ADD sufferers. The drivers have comic-book names such as Snake Oiler, Semper Fi-ber and Thor-azine.

Except for Racer X, who wears an X-Men suit and cool, identity-hiding shades and is played with a hint of "Nobody I know will see this, right?" by Matthew Fox ("Lost"). He's a possible bad guy who may be a good guy who may be more than just a good guy to Speed.

Fox needn't have seemed so embarrassed. Oscar winner Susan Sarandon (as Speed's mom) certainly wasn't. As long and sometimes dull and certainly silly as "Speed Racer" is, it's no dumber than "Transformers" and every bit as witty and eye-catching. The flashbacks to Speed (and Trixie's) youth are the best scenes. The races are digital image time-killers. But anything involving arguing the merits of "selling out" to the Cartel could have been cut. This isn't " Harry Potter." Ninety minutes of "Speed" (it's more than two hours) would have sufficed.

But any film fan will appreciate the Wachowski's vision of this alternate universe, which is every bit as densely textured and as pan-Asian/pan-planetary in its casting as "The Matrix." It may have been utter folly to write the checks for them to indulge in this whimsy, but between the pimped rides, the wacky races and that darned chimp, they've concocted a summer sugar buzz that kids will remember, until "Prince Caspian" opens next week.

SPEED RACER is a Warner Brothers Pictures release written and directed by Andy and Larry Wachowski, based on the animated series by Tatsuo Yoshida. Running time: 129 minutes. Rated PG for sequences of action, some violence and language. Opens today in area theaters.

* * * ** Classic; * * * * Excellent; * * * Good; * * Fair; * Poor; * Don't bother