When Speed Racer ends and you walk out of the
theater, you realize something: The real world looks like shit.
Bland and blurry and gray and drab and dirty, actual existence is the
exact opposite of the world that the Wachowski Brothers have created in
their latest film—a place that’s so hyperkinetic, hyperactive,
and hypercolored that once you see it, it’s impossible not to get
caught up in it, and captivated by it, and turned into a drooling,
blank-eyed idiot. Speed Racer might not be much more than a
visually mind-blowing sugar rush, but goddamn, I kind of love it.
Speed Racer is based on the groundbreaking anime series from
the ’60s, and this is of the utmost importance: This time, instead of
just reappropriating anime techniques, as they did in the Matrix movies, here the Wachowski Brothers are unabashedly making a full-on,
live-action anime, complete with zoom lines, candy-colored set designs,
cartoony explosions, and cartoonier people. There’s a story in here,
too, somewhere: Speed Racer (Emile Hirsch) drives a car really, really
fast in order to get back at an eeeevil corporate overlord (Roger
Allam) who’s blackmailing Speed’s family (including his sweet parents,
played by John Goodman and Susan Sarandon). Speed’s also got Trixie
(Christina Ricci), his hot girlfriend who flies a pink helicopter, and
there’s also a little candy-lovin’ fat kid (Paulie Litt)—not to
mention Chim-Chim, the Racer family’s loyal chimpanzee! Oh, and also:
ninjas!
Speed Racer isn’t utterly nonsensical, but, appropriately
enough, it’s damn close—in a world where cars spend as much time
flying as they do driving, it’s a bit naïve to expect things like
plot and character to operate according to standard norms. Speed
Racer is the sort of film where an ominous lecture on corporate
greed is spliced with footage of a manic Chim-Chim driving through a
swarm of people on Segways while a little fat kid stands up in the
passenger seat, inexplicably air guitaring for all he’s worth.
Good god, that sentence is gibberish, but worse, it’s a needless
digression: Speed Racer isn’t about character and plot, nor is
it in the least bit concerned about if its audience is going to “get”
what it’s trying to do. (Though, at the screening I attended, its
target audience of preteens totally got it, laughing and
whooping and oohing and awwing as if on cue.) Speed Racer is
about color and momentum and sheen and pop—like if the brightest
Warhols and Lichtensteins were soaked in adrenaline and gasoline and
crammed into a special effects computer—and with its gorgeous,
kaleidoscopic palette and its preposterous camerawork, the skilled
Wachowskis aim to do little else but catch the audience up in the
ludicrous thrill of a cartoon.
Like the first Matrix, Speed Racer looks and feels
like nothing else we’ve ever seen on film—but while the
Matrixes (Matrices?) became increasingly bogged down with
melodrama, allegory, and technobabble, Speed Racer, thankfully,
never stops being fun—even the end credits are
goofily psychedelic. You’re either the sort of person who can roll with
this sort of thing or you’re not; if you’re not, I’d advise you to stay
home in the real world, where shit-flinging monkeys aren’t valuable
allies in kung fu showdowns, and where neon cars don’t frantically
careen through bright blue ice tunnels or blissfully spin out in bright
orange deserts. But if you’re down for any of the above, fuck, are you
gonna have a great time.
