Feel the fear: Wachowskis and Christina Ricci do live-action version "Speed Racer"

I agree that this movie should be done in the spirit of the original without being sly or self-conscious. It really should be a G movie with lovingly crafted cheese-ball dialog and fun action sequences.

Ladies and Gentlemen... The Trailer!

oh god
we don't have quicktime at work
thank christ
I'm going to need to go load up on some booze before I sit down for that

I can't think of a movie so intentionally day-glo since Dick Tracy

Emile Hirsch totally looks like Bruce McCulloch from Kids in the Hall.

only when he's wearing the helmet.

Fear and loathing among the suits

The writing in that article was killing me:

This summer, the risks are particularly steep for Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros. studio, which has hundreds of millions of dollars riding on three major releases: “Speed Racer,” the Batman sequel “The Dark Knight” and “Get Smart,” a big-screen adaptation of the 1960s sitcom.

“Get Smart,”And "Speed Racer" by far is the riskiest of them all.

kinda bombed apparently

New Yorker: "You could call it entertainment, and use it to wow your children for a couple of hours. To me, it felt like Pop fascism, and I would keep them well away."

seriously, just fuck the Wachowskis at this point

Did it at least look like a Wipeout movie? If I'm going to blow $3 on this thing, eventually, I wanna know if I can get my N64 vibe or not.

it felt like Pop fascism

oh fuck you

like seriously??

way to go i fucking applaud you for your penetrating and edgy insight

Wait this was actually awesome.

I saw it on an IMAX and it was ace. Now obviously it's totally lacking in things like plot, acting and any kind of coherence; but the thing is so completely mental and looks so beautifully dayglow and trippy that I'll forgive it all its other flaws.

And there's a chimp fighting a ninja,; what more could you ask for.

It's not lacking a plot!

it's lacking an audience

I think this is the best movie I've seen all year

But its competition is Iron Man and Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Oh my.

So good. The fashion, the racing, the colors, the music.

Especially in IMAX at Citywalk.

Anthony Lane has obviously never seen an episode of the Speed Racer cartoon or watched an auto race in his life.

Like "Tron" its aesthetic deliberately eschews versimilitude.

The cars are most like Can Am late 60s/early 70s. Thankfully not open wheel.

Trixie and Speed look like Yerac and F. White belts and all.

Tombot, you're making a big mistake not seeing this in IMAX while you can!

Did I mention that it has Ninjas? And the Japanese actor Rain?

never seen the original series - not that that would make me want to see this either i guess

Familiarity with the original series is very helpful to understanding why this is the way it is. The cartoon was unartful, low-budget, but super stylish Japanese late 60s animation.

Also it helps to like -- or, failing that, accept that many of the world's people like -- auto racing.

So. Good.

the desperate skirting of ordinary feelings in favor of the trumped-up variety; the confidence in technology as a spectacle in itself; and, above all, the sense of master manipulators posing as champions of the little people. What does that remind you of?

the space program!!

so wait, what's the deal, this movie looked badass in previews. Does it suck or not?

No it does not suck. It is so, so good. You should see it on the big screen while you can and in IMAX if possible.

It is a spectacle worth seeing for the state-of-the-art technical effects alone. It's like the next step in an evolution from "Tron," "Blade Runner" and "The Matrix."

Reviewers like Wired understand the awesomeness of the movie. Anthony Lane from the New Yorker doesn't.

Of course if you impose anachronistic Olde Hollywoode film critic archetypes and rules on the movie it will fail.

I have no idea where to begin tearing Lane a new one. But I'll start here.

Trixie is just the kind of marshmallow-brained creature that the Ricci of old—the funky Ricci who played Wednesday Addams—would have roasted over a naked flame.

WTF, she fixes helicopters, kicks ass in fights against the baddies and drives the wheels off anything she steers.

The film revolves around cars, yet there are practically no cars. Almost all the vehicles you see are digital creations, as is the track itself.

This criticism is INCOMPREHENSIBLE. It's like saying there were no cars in Pixar's "Cars." Cars are critical to Speed Racer and they are all over the movie. Moreover, the technical car and engine talk actually MAKES SOME SENSE as it is used in the movie. When they talk technical specs they actually use units of measure that make some conceivable sense. Of course it's all way overloaded and silly and there is way too much going on action-wise to ever follow it all from one point of view but that is how AUTO RACING is, when there are 43 stories happening at once at 43 points on a mile oval throughout a 600-mile race.

The acting is very good. They use the "gee whiz" stylized acting tropes as in Indiana Jones and Star Wars and it is FUNNY. John Goodman is Pops, for crissake.

Art direction, costume, MUSIC. Everything. I don't know much about anime or manga but I do know Rain is a Japanese superstar celebrity and he has a really intereting character in the movie. And Speed walks around dressed like an international hipster whenever he's not wearing his racing firesuit.

Plus it has the Wachowski's signature paranoia idealism-versus-evil storyline.

I feel sorry for anyone who doesn't see it or like it.

Anyway see it and post here.

Thanks for the great review! I will try to see it; I don't have an IMAX anywhere near me right now so I won't be seeing it that way.

Yay!

Well I'll be. Rain is Korean, not Japanese.

Score one for Mom's team.

*puts I'm a cyborg, But That's Ok on list of films to see*

You should see it on the big screen while you can and in IMAX if possible.

YOU SHOULD SEE IT ON THE BIG SCREEN WHILE YOU CAN AND IN IMAX IF POSSIBLE.

Dave, did you see it?

felicity you've convinced me to check this out.

this actually: but that is how AUTO RACING is, when there are 43 stories happening at once at 43 points on a mile oval throughout a 600-mile race.

nascar mystifies me but i'm hella into gran turismo

Yes, I think Anthony Lane did not get that. Also, he seems blind.

I wish I made the effort to see this in IMAX rather than on a tiny Beverly Center screen. I loved this and all of its ridiculousness and jumped on board during the scene when little Speed was drawing flip books and imagining his school desk was a race car. OK, so I'm biased because I did the same when I was a kid and never missed the original series.

Felicity's comments are spot on. If people weren't looking to take down the Wachowskis after the final Matrix debacle, I think this would have done much better theatrically.

The formula for this is:

( Dick Tracy + Mondo 2000 ) * DMT

speed racer++. total love letter to extropian technodream fusion whathaveyou. don't know what else to compare it to in that it was totally *knowing* about how silly it was being, and totally *not ironic* about it, which probably made it feel like it had lots more to say than it did.

this was some slept-on shit right here.
felicity and elvis thoroughly otm.
the DVD has a featurette with extra ludicrous voiceover nonsense about some of the car and track designs. also with the dvd you can watch the race sequences like a bazillion times. this is all to make me feel better about missing it in theaters.

highly disappointed, however, by the decisions to abandon the classic intro (appreciated the few nods to it during the movie) and so many missed opportunities in the score

Like "Tron" its aesthetic deliberately eschews versimilitude.

This means it's supposed to look fake, right?

"What you do behind the wheel of a race car has nothing to do with business."

This was infinitely more entertaining than the 3rd Matrix movie.

Just saw this, one of the first things I've seen in several years which has left me totally befuddled. Feel totally guilty for enjoying this, like eating nothing but pop rocks all day, that left my head spinning too. Loved the Pierre et Gilles touches in the romantic sequences.

It was better than Spy Kids 3D.

I have developed a giant fucking man crush on Emile Hersh, and have continued my giant fucking normal crush on Christina Ricci. This movie gave me the most awesome headache of my life.

This still holds up. There really is nothing like it. Imagine if this had gotten the 3D treatment!

I don't think other movies have yet put nearly as much information on screen, not even the Transformers films, as measured by the sheer amount of streaming stutter and obvious compression artifacts whenever I try to watch this thing in full HD. I really, really hope they'll bring it back for a theatrical run one day.

oh i saw this for the first time a few months ago! i loooooooooooooooooooved it

also when is Elon Musk going to implement that instantaneous bubble-foam ejection system into all Tesla vehicles

i think at a certain point i tried to count all the times they did a wipe with a talking head and imo it's prob incalculable

saw it like a year ago -- incredibly fake looking video game racing, but the rest is quite good. they managed to get a good point across, working with the system to showcase their ideas.

I stand by everything I said upthread only more so.

watched this last night for the first time; it's kind of amazing. only fails when they try to show real emotion.

i gave up on this movie. it's no LazyTown.

This is currently free to stream in HD with an iMDBtv 7-day trial run.

When the trial runs I will likely be buying it from Bezos in HD on Prime. Despite having the DVD with all the extra features already. If they invent eight other ways to see this movie in my lifetime, I will probably buy it at least six more times.

I can't wait to buy it again in 2035 on my portable holoIMAX system.