Comments on: One-Sentence Review of “Speed Racer”

By: patrick

patrick — Thu, 15 May 2008 21:14:41 +0000

The Wachowski bros certainly put a lot of effort into making Speed Racer… the movie overall looked and felt like a cross between anime, a kaleidoscope, that Flintstones movie, a video game and the Dukes of Hazard

By: q

Thu, 15 May 2008 03:14:41 +0000

Man, that monkey would eat SO MUCH candy.

heehee. He’d always get a stomachache.

By: NewtypeS3

NewtypeS3 — Tue, 13 May 2008 23:18:35 +0000

@ Zifnab:

“…back in the 1980s?” Speed Racer premiered in America when my mother was three: the jolly ol’ year of 1967.

And even then, it takes more than flashy lights or John Goodman beating up Ninjas (ok, that latter sounds kinda cool) to make me want to see a Wachowski-ized version of a cartoon where the only thing worth remembering was the car and the monkey who ate candy.

By: Zifnab

Zifnab — Mon, 12 May 2008 20:07:19 +0000

Lies, heresy, blasphomey, and more of the same!
That movie was everything I could have asked for and more. Over-the-top cheesy and ridiculous but with something resembling a plot and characters that genuinely filled the rolls they were cast in.

Given that Speed Racer wasn’t exactly the best anime out back in the 80s, the studio got full mileage out of its vehicle (pun retroactively intended) and

Even if you had no idea what Speed Racer was, it was a good kids movie and not an entirely bad young adults movie. Just my opinion, though.

By: Rob Brown

Rob Brown — Mon, 12 May 2008 05:18:34 +0000

bunnyofdoom: Beside the point, I know, but–2005 is “way back in the day”?

By: Daysaver

Daysaver — Mon, 12 May 2008 02:55:28 +0000

John Goodman beat up a ninja. He beat up a ninja and then he talked trash on said ninja.

I straight up loved Speed Racer. It was so pretty!

By: malakim2099

malakim2099 — Mon, 12 May 2008 00:21:30 +0000

It looks like one of those movies that you buy when it’s out on DVD/Bluray to justify the five grand you tossed out on the home theater system.

By: bunnyofdoom

bunnyofdoom — Sun, 11 May 2008 23:12:01 +0000

While it did have a robot plane, it was still was shite. A robot plane that went rogue for no reason, but then went good again, once again for no reason.

By: Sage

Sage — Sun, 11 May 2008 21:05:14 +0000

Speed Racer was like if someone filmed my soul: I have never been so happy watching a movie, and I had a giant grin on the whole time. Of course, I’m also watching it from a filmmaker’s perspective, and they did a lot of stuff that has NOT been done in film before, and original techniques (techniques, not ideas) usually only happens in 1 or 2 movies per year, if that.

I never saw the cartoon.

By: dom

dom — Sun, 11 May 2008 20:02:19 +0000

Although I agree that the movie looks about as exciting as an abortion, the show ROCKED! Also, Positronic, I totally see how that looks like F-Zero with the neon twisting tracks and whatnot. Were’nt they normal oval racetracks on the show?

By: Sig

Sig — Sun, 11 May 2008 18:06:30 +0000

John Goodman as Polonius, Ricci as Ophelia, Fox as Laertes (or Horatio)? That I might actually see. And are we sure the Wachowskis didn’t film this as a racecar-enchanced ADHD/HDTV version of Hamlet?

By: bentarc

bentarc — Sun, 11 May 2008 15:13:31 +0000

Honestly if that cast was doing Hamlet I would probably give it a try, even though I knew the movie was going to be awful beyond all reason.

By: Alan

Alan — Sun, 11 May 2008 14:45:51 +0000

I disagree, I saw Speed Racer and felt like it was money well spent.

By: Positronic

Positronic — Sun, 11 May 2008 13:08:51 +0000

I really, really enjoyed it. Am I a bad person?

(of course, my enjoyment kicked in when I started thinking of it as “F-Zero X: The Movie” instead of “Speed Racer”. A pity for all those talking heads between the car racing goodness. And why does the movie star Captain Falcon’s baby brother?)

By: Alexandra

Alexandra — Sun, 11 May 2008 05:02:42 +0000

I went and saw Iron Man the day it came out here in Oz at 3pm – just me, a couple of unemployed layabout yoof and a dozen kids all in school uniform who had clearly wagged school to see it on the opening day.

I thought Iron Man was all types of fun, but before they got to that we had the trailer for Speed Racer visited upon us like a stream of fluoro vomit.

I only have the vaguest memory of the cartoons. There was no chance in hell that my fellow movie-goers had ever seen them. After the trailer finished, in the ensuing silence, a cracked adolescent voice rang out around a mouthful of popcorn: “What the FUCK?”.

Which review is fourteen words fewer than yours, admittedly, but then, we only had to sit through the trailer. Fortunately.