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