Speed Racer

GO SPEED GO!

Man this film should't work.
It just shouldn't.
So many things are wrong in it! I mean it has an annoying kid that does stupid things, along with a chimp dressed up with clothes. How WRONG is that?
It's something that could appeal to 7 years old, but no grown man could actually even admit they could even bear to lay their eyes on such a thing. I think I'm a grown man.
Maybe not fully grown.
Maybe I have bits of 7 years old boy behind my hairs...

But the fact is I just dug the hell out of Speed Racer.
So the question stands: how did they do it?

Hands down to the Wachowskis, they seem like they just can't do half measures. So when they come to make a movie adapting a camp anime series from the 80's, they just don;t try to make it more than it is and set out to make a camp movie adapted from an anime series from the 80's. Only they push it to the maximum.
And I think that makes the difference.

Because ultimately they produced something I believe has never been seen on screen. They litterally made a live cartoon. Mind you, even CGI animation pictures might look more "real" than this.
Every inch of the frame is saturated with bright colours, costumes, props, backgrounds... Things get distorted, screen splits, multiple times.
You know those parts of Ang Lee's Hulk where he took this kind of comics style, well Speed Racer takes this and pushes it ten notches. As they go the Wachowskis invent a new visual grammar. Actually it's not quite new, because it's things that japanese animation has used for years, but it's the very first time this has been applied to live action, I believe. Like that anyway.

And it's cool, every frame of this spells C-O-O-L.
It all looks great.
And it plays great as well, the cast is incredible and all play it so straight, but it never go into any sort of parody. It's not a movie that takes itself seriously, but it's also to be taken completely at 1st degree. The tone just feels right.

It's a movie with integrity. It's so honest it would just be a pity to watch it cynically...

You never feel that it's looking down on you.
And athough you get an "annoying kid" (TM) with a chimp, they're actually not annoying. They're funny! Practical humour, sure, but no fart joke. Even George couldn't escape that.

And the story even manages some clever narrative tricks, that makes it entertaining although it knows it can't really surprise you...

Action-wise, the races are obviously the central point. They take the StarWars Episode 1 pod race to the cleaners (leaving just the Darth Maul fight worth watching in there...). The term "car-fu" actually lives up to its name in a sort of crazy mix of Wacky Racers and F-Zero / Wipeout... Fast, inventive, crazy, clear...

So yeah the Wachowskis have made an experimental crazy live anime for kids fully enjoyable for honest grown men. I really would like to know where they found how to do that...

GO SPEED GO!!!