Speed Racer comes to life- BRILLIANTLY
Shortly after the kids got off the school bus on Friday afternoon, we piled in the family van, picked up a couple neighborhood kids, and headed to the cinema. Speed Racer was finally here!
The three boys (average age 8) and one girl (6) were so psyched. And I was excited to share in some family fun that hopefully wouldn’t suck.
And you know what? Speed Racer does not suck. It actually surpassed my expectations and gave the kids and I one of the most enjoyable movie-going experiences we’ve ever had.
I was a huge fan of the Speed Racer cartoon when I was a kid. Later on, I discovered and devoured some of the original comics done by Tatsuo Yoshida. The TV show was an after-school must for me and tons of other kids. It made such an impact. When I was four years old and just getting into the show, I lost a Mach 5 toy I had while at pre-school. It was never found, and I suspected a couple little clepto bastards from class were to blame. I was crushed. It’s funny how mega-important a single 2-inch piece of metal on wheels can mean to a young boy.
But that Mach 5 car, like many Hot-Wheels and Matchbox cars, was a kind of fuel for my imagination.
Remember playing with the cars and making your own Grand-Prix set-ups? Maybe you were lucky enough to actually have some store-bought Hot-Wheels race track. Or you merely lusted after the neighbors’. Oh what you could do with that plastic track and some phone books on a chair! And if your younger brother cheated in a race or wrecked your set-up, you could whip him silly with a section of track.
Speed Racer has a huge nostalgia factor for a generation of us boys. It’s not for everybody. But there is something inherently special and exciting about 1960’s race cars. Cool cars in general. Motorcycles. Going fast. All that stuff.
Anyway- Back to the movie.
As the kind of kid-turned-grown-up I described above, the Speed Racer live-action movie from the Wachowski brothers delivers the goods. It exuded that nostalgic childhood feeling of excitement I hopelessly wanted from the new Star Wars movies.
I was very skeptical when hearing about this big screen adaptation of Speed Racer. I got a little worried when I saw the first trailer. As many of you know, I am not a huge fan of CGI animation. Much of it feels so cold and lifeless and out-of-place. Especially when CGI is attempting to mimic something real.
But that’s the thing about the Speed Racer movie. It’s not trying to be real. It’s a fantasy adventure with fantasy race cars with otherworldly gadgets zooming through death defying races in a world that could never be real.
This movie aspires to be as cool as you can imagine.
This is the Speed Racer of your mind’s eye. This is Speed Racer coming to life the way you imagined it while playing with your toys. Bringing the toy car up to your eye for a close-up. Then having it zoom away to make an impossible jump.
In your imagination, the good guys always win. Even when they’re thought dead, heroes can secretly pull strings from beyond the grave or even come back to save the day. They may wear a mask and call themselves Racer X.
In your imagination, the camera can go anywhere. Gravity means nothing. You can accomplish anything you aspire to.
The new Speed Racer film gives us all of this in motion with kicking sound effects.
If you can’t relate to anything I’ve written above, then you probably won’t enjoy Speed Racer a whole lot. But if you’ve got a kid in your life, take them to see this thing on the big screen and watch their face fill with wonder and wait for him to cheer for the good guy.
Im really bummed to see so many reviews out there slamming Speed Racer. It’s sad how, for some reason, these critics have lost the kid inside of them and have become the cold hardened adults we never wanted to be when we grew up. Now I can be very critical and opinionated. I have no problem with that. However, you need to do it in context.
Speed Racer is absolutely nothing like Iron Man. The two films are being compared nonetheless, because they are competing summer “blockbusters”. I enjoyed Iron Man a lot. But it’s not a family-film. My son liked it, but Iron Man is not for most kids.
Speed Racer is not perfect movie.
There are a couple sections where things could be streamlined for the intended audience. An aspect of the story concerning corporate hostile takeovers and a company’s cost of stock had little meaning to the kids sitting with me in the theater.
But the kids knew who was good and who was bad. They knew that Pops Racer really loved his son Rex, even though they had a fight the last night they saw each other. They knew that Spritle and Chim-Chim were hiding in the Mach 5 trunk again. They knew that Speed and Trixie would finally get that kiss after the race was inevitably won.
And I knew that the kids would leave the theater happy and inspired to go home and play. I was right. The kids alternated between playing Hot-Wheels and video games. They drew cars and races and explosions at the kitchen table, and raced their bikes down the custom-made track on the driveway.
As a parent, it was refreshing to see a movie with an uplifting theme, and with a core of family values. In today’s world of day-care and divorce, it’s nice to see a story about a family who has its priorities right.
I would like to throw a lot of praise on the makers of Speed Racer for bringing something artistically and thematically special to the big screen that every kid can enjoy, and every parent can feel good about. They made Speed Racer the only way it could be done, and it’s fantastic.
Check it out....
Also, please comment below.
Any thoughts? Have you seen the Speed Racer movie? Did you like it as a kid?
_TLE
EDWARDS ILLUSTRATION
Sunday, May 11, 2008
