Greynolds Park Challenges SPEED RACER And Speed Wins!!

Merrick here...
My man Greynolds Park sent in some thoughts on SPEED RACER shortly after attending a screening of the film. Due to his enthusiasm for the movie, I should probably say that I know Greynolds...he is not a plant & has nothing to do with this film.
Here's Greynolds...

So I've gotta say that as a fan of the classic Speed Racer cartoon series, I was not impressed with what I've seen over the past 6 months or so in relation to the promotion and hype of this new live action film. I honestly had no intention of seeing it when it was released in theaters. Well, this weekend a friend who works for the studio (Warner Bros) calls me up and asks if my girlfriend and I wanted to attend a Press Screening in Los Angeles that evening. I declined initially, but just for the heck of it asked the g/f. She, of course, surprised me by saying she'd love to go. So I caved and figured if it really sucked, maybe we'd wander out and duck into another flick there at the theater. I gotta tell you we ended up going and as soon as the movie began, I was riveted to my seat. Words, CANNOT explain the magnitude of this film. HOLY SHIT! Forget Wachowski, those brothers should be called WOW'chowski! Ok. I dont even know if this really captures it, but imagine if you took visual elements of TRON, silly imagination of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, Star Wars: Episode 1's Pod Racing scenes, Cool futuristic cars of Back to the Future 2, a technologically rampant city from Blade Runner, Color Schemes of Dick Tracy, CGI elements of Sky Captain & the World of Tomorrow and the Comic Book stylings of 300 and Sin City and blended them all together. You'd get a concoction of something that is so visually stunning, rich in color and mind blowingly effects laden that you'd be speechless. And thus I truly was. I've NEVER seen a movie like this before. The editing was fast pace, the details of props and 70's retro sets along with flashbacks woven into moving wipes of current scenes and around characters was quite impressive. The acting was decent as well though at times Emile Hirsch's character reminded me a bit of Hayden Christiansen - yet there were other times he totally embodied the cartoon Speed we all grew up on. There were show stealers like Paulie Litt who played Spritel (that kid has a future in Hollywood!) John Goodman and Susan Surandon were solid and Matthew Fox's "Racer X" character honestly didnt stray too far from his "Jack" strong leader persona from LOST, but definitely held his ground. And Christina Ricci both old and young versions of her Trixie character were a pure delight to watch. With homaginal nods to the classic series, it feels like this movie is so perfect and the CGI is so breathtaking, you really feel like you're at times watching a bad-ass cartoon - then at times watching a quirky, over-saturated scene from a Tim Burton film. Admittingly though, like many movies like Gladiator or 300 in the way that the editing is so fast paced that you cant really appreciate the fighting because the images are cut so fast, I sorta felt that way about some of the racing scenes in the movie, just too fast and quickly cut. But man, overall, what a ride!!! I was SO glad I saw this movie. An,d to top it off, when it was done, a rep from IMAX walked our group of about 100 to an adjoining IMAX theater in the same complex where we were shown the 1st 16 minutes of the film again, this times in IMAX. WOW!!! WOW!!! WOW!!! This is apparently only coming to 107 theaters in the US in IMAX we were told. I suggest you FIND ONE near you and see it!!! The scope and size of IMAX and the details and effects of this movie, with the sound that comes out...shit you'll feel you're in the Mach 5 (and 6). That's all I've got to say, even if you never were a fan of the old show, you will love this movie, it was just over-the-top pure fun and I just wanted to let you all know this is definetely a must see! Greynolds Park