The summer of 2008 broke history, and rebuilt it.
America suffered through a bitter presidential election on the road to a globewrecking financial crisis.
In theaters, cinematic generations were rising and falling.
Credit: Snap Stills/REX/Shutterstock
Last week:Iron ManandMade of Honor, twofilms about awful men becoming less awful.
Next week:Prince Caspianand the plight of the PG fantasy franchise.
And I can’t think of a more curious flop thanSpeed Racer the Wachowskis' follow-up to theMatrixtrilogy.
ButSpeed Racerwasn’t just a flop.
And more importantly, it deserved to be a flop.
It’s a complete mess.
And not even a particularly interesting one.
hey tell me you are about to defend it.
DARREN:Well, Chris, first of all, no joke, I snorted Pixie Stix once.
And I wasmucholder than 8.
(Iwasan age with “8” in it, though.)
So it won’t surprise you that the pure sensation ofSpeedRaceris my jam.
By comparison: The colors, Chris,the colors!
Just a few years earlier, the siblings were staging martial arts fight scenes with religious-ritual coolness.
(Cut to: Keanu Reevesslow-mo-ing a decent Chow Yun-Fat imitation.)
Am I crazy to see something forward-thinking in the excess?
And is it possible, justpossible, that the film would’ve been better with a different lead?
It’s not even so much the look of the film that I object to.
It really does look great.
A little of the Wachowskis' aesthetic goes a long way here.
The real problem is that aside from the anime-eyed Christina Ricci, the casting is all wrong.
The less said about Speed’s little bird-flipping brother Spritle, the better.
Or is he, as they say in acting class, “going for something”?
But, of course, the real problem is Speed himself, Emile Hirsch.
His Speed Racer is all hair and no charisma.
I want to be clear, I like Emile Hirsch.
DidSpeed Racerruin his career?
DARREN:I actually think Fox’s strategy here play a cartoon character like a cartoon!
is more successful than Hirsch’s attempt to frowningly explore Speed’s dead-brother psychological trauma.
I’m here for any death-of-cinema rabbit holes, Chris.
But I think it’s a bit unfair to compareSpeed Racerto our modern mess of marvelous advertorial universes.
Which is fine, becauseInfinity War’s main purpose is to let Hemsworth out-Chris Pratt!
ButSpeedRacer’s big visual idea is the precise opposite: It wantseverythingto pop.
But isn’t there something admirable, Chris, in how the Wachowskistotallyembrace CGI here?
I know it’s critically lame to pull the “It’s sposta to look fake!”
lever, but has anything ever successfully lookedthisfake?
CHRIS:Well, clearly you’re forgetting about 2004’s purposefully-fake urtextSky Captain and the World of Tomorrow!
Who exactly isSpeed Racerfor?
On the one hand, it seems to be aimed at ADHD, video game-savvy kids.
This all should have set off blaring alarms to the Warner Bros. execs who signed off on it.
But it didn’t.
Neither did its 135-minute runtime apparently.
Ironically for a movie about the sugar-rush velocity of car racing, it just spins and spins its wheels.
No, instead, the studio just gave the Wachowskis carte blanche praying for anotherMatrix.
Making the bad guy an evil corporate guy praising “the unassailable might of money!”
is a bit rich, considering this movie is a two-hour-plus bonfire of Time Warner megabucks.
Iwantthose people to exist, so I’ll continue spinningSpeed Racer’s wheels.
Stop steering, world, and start driving.
