REVIEW: Speed Racer

BY ROBERT W. BUTLER THE KANSAS CITY STAR

CHRISTINA RICCI as Trixie, SUSAN SARANDON as Mom Racer, JOHN GOODMAN as Pops Racer, EMILE HIRSCH as Speed Racer and KICK GURRY as Sparkyin Speed Racer.

LITTLE ROCK — Speed Racer runs for two hours and nine minutes. Episodes of the animated ’60s TV series which inspired it ran for only 22 minutes. And that was too long.

The latest from the Matrix-making Wachowski brothers is an underpopulated, uncompelling and grotesquely overlong piece of sparkly nothingness geared to a sixth-grader’s world view.

Speed Racer

6.8

Rating: PG

Length: 2 hours, 9 minutes

More info on: Speed Racer

When it’s moving - when hero Speed is zapping his race car around a track resembling the innards of a gigantic pinball machine - the film offers the sort of visually distracting (if largely incoherent) overload today’s children revel in. But Speed Racer can’t get even that right, sacrificing action for long passages of momentum-killing exposition.

About the only area in which Speed Racer excels is in its look. A visual cacophony of neon colors, ’60s retro kitsch and computer-rendered cars whose shiny plastic bodies reflect their surroundings, the movie might be likened to a high-tech Christmas ornament. And like said ornament, once you crack this yarn open there’s nothing inside.

In the film’s opening moments we are treated to a back story that describes young Speed’s car-obsessed childhood, his adoration of older brother Rex (Scott Porter), his romance with classmateTrixie and his relationship with car-building Pops (John Goodman) and doting Mom (Susan Sarandon).

This segment is effective, particularly when little Speed (he appears to have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) uses his classroom time to imagine he’s drivingin the Grand Prix, surrounding by animated cars drawn in the style of a grade-school pupil.

Back in the real world (the term is used advisedly), the nowgrown Speed (Emile Hirsch) is a zooming fool determined to win for the sake of big brother Rex, who broke with the family and died after plowing into a mountain during a cross-country race.

But there’s trouble brewing. Automotive magnate Royalton (Roger Allam) is impressed by Speed’s style and wants him to join the Royalton team. This goes against everything the anti-corporate Mom-and-Pops racers stand for.

Rejected, Royalton decides to play dirty.

Meantime, Speed is recruited by a government agent improbably named Inspector Detector (Benno Furmann) to help gather evidence that will break the back of a corporate/criminal race-fixing scheme involving Royalton and Cockney crime lord Cruncher Block (John Benfield).

Speed forms an alliance with Racer X, a mysterious masked driver who late in the film doffs his disguise to reveal that he’s played by Matthew Fox. Somehow ninja assassins become involved, along with a family of Japanese car builders and unscrupulous drivers like Cannonball Taylor (Ralph Herforth) and Snake Oiler (Christian Oliver).

Which raises an interesting point: Are there any rules? The competitions in Speed Racer are more like bumper car rides or demolition derbies, with participants ramming each other and nudging the other guy off cliffs. The vehicles are outfitted with presumably illegal grappling hooks, tire-shredding blades and pumps that spew oil in the path of pursuing drivers. Speed’s machine can spring vertically into the air to avoid collisions. (For all we know it can fly, which sort of negates the whole idea of a road race.)

It’s infantile in the extreme - which wouldn’t be bad if the Wachowskis exhibited an interesting postmodern take on the material or bothered to create some sort of internal logic for this world. And they miss numerous opportunities for humor, relying mostly on the unremarkable high jinks of Speed’s candy-scarfing little brother Spritle (Paulie Litt)and his pet chimpanzee.

The ape gives the film’s best performance. At least it exhibits more life and better comic timing than narcoleptic Goodman, the over-the-top cast of bad guys or generic Hirsch. That last one’s a real heartbreaker - Hirsch gave one of last year’s best performances in Sean Penn’s Into the Wild but here he’s reduced to a hairstyle.

MovieStyle, Pages 39, 44 on 05/09/2008