Directed by Andy and Larry Wachowski
Warner Bros., 2007
By Caesar Martini
I know, most of you are thinking, “What Racer? Speed who?” For the unfamiliar, Speed Racer was a Japanese cartoon imported to North America during the sixties. It was widespread and somewhat groundbreaking in comparison to other cartoons being shown in North America, but its popularity hasn’t really lasted over the proceeding four decades. As far as I can gather (I’ve never seen it), the cartoon was about a very literally-named character, Speed Racer (as in first name Speed, last name Racer), who raced in futuristic races with his famous car, the Mach-5. He also had a little brother and a chimp who would always stow away in the trunk and help him win races — God knows how.
It’s said that one of the earliest examples of bullet-time appeared in an episode of Speed Racer; this might be why the bullet-time-happy Wachowski Brothers (Bound, The Matrix trilogy) decided to adapt this cartoon into a live action movie.
Say what you will about their choice of material (“Speed Racer? Really??” were my first words on the matter), the Wachowskis are amazing visual directors. Watching this film is like looking through a kaleidoscope on LSD. Everything is super-colourful: the reds are super-red, the purples are super-purple, and so on. It looks so vibrant and rich that you suspect the paint they used for the sets was made from Walt Disney’s blood. And the racing action is awesome; jumps and turns and spins and hyper-fast speeds. For Nintendo veterans, it’s like watching an F-Zero race in real life.
So it’s nice to look at. What about the rest? Well, the plot of the movie is fairly simple: Speed uses his awesome car and mad racing skills to somehow fight against evil and corrupt corporations. This movie looks like it’s for kids – and it is – but there are some grown-up concepts in there, such as corporate influence in sports, and family strife. Because of the kiddy slant to the movie, I never really got caught up in it, but had fun watching just the same.
The Wachowskis have made a unique movie here. They used some crazy directing tricks and a gorgeous colour palette to translate and represent a cartoon into a real life movie, and they did a fantastic job of it. It really is like you’re watching a cartoon or a video game. In this way, the movie is a great success, and anyone who watches movies for visual presentation should treat themselves to this.
Sadly, it’s struggling at the box office — I think adults see the ads and think it’s solely for kids, and kids see ads for this movie and go, “What the hell is a Speed Racer?” In a way, I think it’s almost too literal a translation. Speed Racer is a niche property, and the Wachowskis didn’t really expand it or update it very much for a wider audience. But the twenty-five or so Speed Racer cartoon fans out there should be on cloud nine.
When you say “almost too literal a translation” I agree with you, but also I think a problem is the movie is too literal a tranlsation of a cartoon to the big screen- I mean that the movie becomes little more than the old cartoon on the big screen. When I get excited about a cartoon being turned into a live action movie, part of that is the thrill of seeing it in live action, not just humans translated into the cartoon world Spacejam style.
Ha ha, Spacejam.
I know exactly what you’re saying — but it’s hard for me fault the Wachowskis on that, because even though I don’t think that was the right way to go, they made a decision and accomplished their goals perfectly. It’s just not my tastes (or many other people’s, it seems).