Speed Racer - My review

Finally this weekend I took my kids to see Speed Racer. My husband had no interest whatsoever. When I first heard about the movie and who was making it, I was excited. I adored the cartoon as a child, and respect the Wachowski brothers for the creativity of the first Matrix film, if not for the last two. Then I started to read the reviews, which for the most part have not been positive.

So, where do I fall in the review spectrum? I didn't love the film, and I didn't hate it, but there are things about it I do love and admire, and things that aggravated me to the extreme. I don't agree with Rex Reed that it was fuschia vomit. I LOVED all the visuals and the wild colors and the effects. This is an anime cartoon come to life in feel and style. Some reviewers criticized that even people that were just talking "had to move", but that was an editing style that I really admired. For instance, a race announcer would move across the screen forming a "wipe transition" to the race footage. That was a technique used over and over, and was a unique style of the movie.

The casting was dead on perfect. When John Goodman did his slow burn -- perfect Pops! Even the kid playing Spritle was annoying == in the perfect Spritle way! Christina Ricci as Trixie will have fan boys swooning, too.

I think the filmmakers realized that this would be a family film, and aimed it squarely at 8 year old boys. Well, I've got an almost 8 year old boy, and he was asking me over and over what time it was and how much of the movie was left to sit through. A family film should aim at 90 minutes and 2 hours is pushing it. This film was two hours and 15 minutes! It's not like this was a novel adaptation like Harry Potter where you were going to be strung up for cutting key plot points! I could have cut 15 minutes of dead weight from this script without losing anything. For cripes sake, show us, don't tell us! There were endless monologues on the evils of corporate empires and certain sequences were just showing off their cool beans visual effects. The seduction of Speed by the big bad corporate empire took forever! Enough already, you're making the kids squirm in their seats. There are two editors listed in the credits -- but was it really the Wachowski brothers making too many of the decisions without some honest critiquing? Why did they have to take the time to show Speed's brother Rex getting the plastic surgery? Would the nine year old audience really not get the link that Racer X IS Rex? I got it in the cartoon and he never took off his mask!

So, it's a two and a half star movie for me. It's a spectacle that is interesting to see on the big screen, but not a can't miss film by any means. I like a lot of the things other reviewers complained about, especially the visuals, but I do agree that for a movie about racing, it sure dragged in parts. In our family, the film did have one huge fan -- my anime loving 15 year old son declared it simply awesome!

Crash & Burn

$20 million was half of the soft estimate that they were hoping for this weekend's box office for Speed Racer. Ouch. There are even reports that this estimate is inflated just to make second place over What Happens in Vegas.

The two people I know who've seen it, both loved Speed Racer. And Roeper and Wilmington raved, too.

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE ESTIMATE May 10 - May 12 Title Engagements Estimated Weekend Box Office 1. Iron Man (PARAMOUNT) 4,111 $50,500,000 2. Speed Racer (WARNER BROS.) 3,606 $20,200,000 3. What Happens in Vegas (FOX) 3,215 $20,000,000 4. Made of Honor (SONY) 2,734 $7,600,000 5. Baby Mama (UNIVERSAL) 2,627 $5,800,000 6. Forgetting Sarah Marshall (UNIVERSAL) 2,376 $3,800,000 7. Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanmo Bay (WARNER BROS.) 2,264 $3,200,000 8. Forbidden Kingdom (LIONSGATE) 1,724 $1,900,000 9. Nim's Island (FOX) 1,601 $1,300,000 10. Redbelt (SONY) 1,379 $1,100,000 in millions of dollars

Full list available Monday afternoon at www.variety.com/boxoffice

Early Reviews Mixed for Speed Racer

Uh oh. The Wachowski brothers, creators of The Matrix, spent $100 million making Speed Racer and it may be a bomb. Hollywood Reporter is estimating only a $25 or $30 million opening weekend, with Iron Man possibly keeping the top spot in its second weekend.

Rex Reed:

I can sit through just about anything, but I draw the line at two hours and 15 minutes of fuchsia vomit. To suffer through this kind of hell, movie critics deserve combat pay.

Our local Josh Larsen gave it only 1 and a half stars! Ouch!

An overwritten, frantically stylized adaptation of the 1960s anime television series from Japan, "Speed Racer" may add a few colors to the rainbow, but it adds nothing to the movies. And revolutionary filmmaking is what we've come to expect from directing siblings Andy and Larry Wachowski, who redefined action cinema with their "Matrix" pictures.

Indeed, even though "Speed Racer" is built around auto races, that highway car chase in "The Matrix Reloaded" has more heart-in-your-throat thrills than all of this new film.

Variety, on the other hand, gave it a better prognosis:

Aimed squarely at family audiences, the Wachowski Brothers’ return behind the camera for the first time since “The Matrix” trilogy is a blur of video action painting and very loud sounds notable solely for its technical wizardry. Otherwise, it’s pure cotton candy -- entirely non-nutritious but too sweet and pretty for young people to resist. General audiences worldwide look to make this Warner Bros. release a substantial hit in all formats, from Imax to eventual homeview sales, with extra coin assured from moppets who require repeat viewings.

My own kids are lukewarm to this pic. I was more excited by the previews of my childhood cartoon brought to real life. They've seen the commercials on Cartoon Network non-stop, and don't seem that desperate to see it. Not like they were for Iron Man -- a story they didn't know about either.