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Here He Comes, Here Comes SPEED RACER, With Massawyrm On His Heels...
Hola all. Massawyrm here.
I don’t know what drugs I was supposed to take before walking into this thing, but I sure as hell didn’t have any on hand when I did. In what will most assuredly become the stoner movie of a generation, Speed Racer is a seizure inducing, Technicolor nightmare that can only be described as something akin to what an 8-year old sees after coating his Cocoa Puffs with Nestle Quik, Pixie Stix and Fun Dip before chasing it down with a Jolt Cola and then jumping up and down to make sure the whole concoction is well mixed. It is sugar-coated insanity racing at 200mph, bouncing off the walls, screaming at the top of its lungs and seeing colors you never thought existed. It is the movie Willy Wonka will heretofore project onto the walls of that batshit crazy ass tunnel of his.
So yes. I thought it was awesome.
Now that’s not to say that this is perfect. It is experimental – that much is certain. And whenever you try something this experimental, the question isn’t necessarily How good a job will you do? The question invariably is Will the Audience accept the world you want to take them to? Something this radical can only be compared to similar works like Tron, Cool World, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and Dick Tracy. One hopes, when playing with a new toy box like this, that it is more Tron than Dick Tracy. The thing is, with Speed Racer, at times it invokes both.
The first hour of the film is pretty soulless, hollow and empty. There’s plenty going on and it sure is pretty – but in truth the first half of the film only exists to set up the second. There’s tons of back-story, lots of plot hooks and a whole slew of characters to get to know. But at times it is a little tedious. Not that I wasn’t particularly entertained, but the world felt very pasted on. All hat and no cattle if you know what I mean. It was a cartoon universe that wasn’t fully committed to being a cartoon. And honestly, you might find it a little hard to get into.
And then the second half kicks in – and with all the hooks firmly in place, all the characters as fleshed out as they will ever be, the movie takes off at a frenetic, mind blowing pace full of all the action, tension and ass kicking moments you were hoping for out of it in the first place. It’s almost like they were spoon feeding you sugar for an hour straight and the moment it starts to kick in you can’t stop yourself from shaking, twitching and shouting HELL YEAH as the film becomes a steady stream of surreal racing sequences, bizarre visuals and ninja fights. And the measure of whether or not you love this film will be your feeling when you hit the second half. If you’ve given up by then, if you’re not committed to continue along with the movie, you will be left in the dust. You’ll feel that it is too little, too late.
But if you are still with the film, if you hang in there enjoying what they have to offer but ready for more – this movie shifts into fifth gear and tears it up something ugly. By the time the final reality spurning race is on, you’re on the edge of your seat, gripping the armrest, listening to Richard fucking Roundtree call the race as cars bounce around like pinballs off of bumpers, chanting under your breath “Go, Speed, Go!” It. Is. Badass.
But it ain’t gonna be for everyone. This is, in effect, this year’s 300 - that movie that everyone will acknowledge is visually stunning and remarkably original, but one that a chunk of the audience will find more style over substance while the rest are hootin’ and hollerin’ for more.
Personally, I’m in the latter category – but I know a lot of older folks who are in the former. It is a film that seems to get better the younger you are. And the kids? The kids are gonna love it. For them it’s like cotton candy laced with LSD – a confectionary ball of fluff that will blow their little fucking minds.
The Wachowskis have once again outdone themselves, making a film no one is quite ready for; a film whose legacy remains in the hands of children.
Whether they’ll embrace it and make it an enduring classic like my generation did Tron or whether they’ll shun it and leave it mostly forgotten like we did Dick Tracy remains to be seen. All I know is that it is a top-notch summer spectacle that is worth seeing big just to take in and gawk at the one-of-a-kind experience it has to offer. Speed Racer comes recommended for those with kids or those who still think like one.
But seriously, go easy on the sugar.
Until next time friends, smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em.
Massawyrm
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Dammit!!
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Best. Comic. Strip. Ever.
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I'll have to be slightly drunk to enjoy this movie. To the point I giggle instead of scoff, I imagine. Could we call this porn for 10-year olds or is that pushing the line of good taste?
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Damn You Michael Bay
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Kids don't realize it when their minds are being blown. They only know whether or not they like what they're seeing. They won't be able to appreciate the fact that it's visually groundbreaking, or what it took to get it onscreen like that. Which is fine, but for "big kids," the story and characters have to be tight.
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this thing is getting baaaaad reviews
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The 300 comparison was perfect. Well done sir.
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http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/speedracer
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The kids can have SR, grown-ups such as myself will be content with Ironman,TDK and Indy 4.
Now everyone is happy! -
Imdb has this as costing $86 million LESS than Iron Man, but it looks like a shit load more CGI.
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I am one of those older folks. 300 looked nice but left me cold, and I wasn't even all that keen on Sin City. These visually spectacular but utterly empty exercises aren't doing it for me the way they might have ten years ago, which I suppose means I'll be giving this a miss until I spot it as cheap DVD rental.It is a shame. I am old. I demand that everyone feel sorry for me!
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The new Indiana Jones sucks and Speed Racer is awesome? So, what else?
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But I think I'm alone there
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I liked too
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Some of the reviews are nasty. I wonder if some of this is left over baggage from the Matrix sequels. Perhaps if they had delivered the goods before then this film would've had an smoother ride...
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i saw it when i was young (when it came out), and don't remember why it would have been called experimental. because it was a live action cartoon?
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Cheer up mate, TDK will be here before you know it!
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original. In fact Sin City and Sky Captains did it first and both films did it better.
You know, I haven't seen Dick Tracy since I was a kid but I remember really enjoying it. Now I'm afraid to go back and watch it. -
Alien 3 was good. Again.
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Chin-Chim is a real chimp played by two different ones in the film.
Saw it the other day. Really cool. It has the innocense of those early 70's cartoons we all used to watch combined with the intense action you would expect in a movie today. Mori got it right when he said it had the sweetness of Babe with the action of Road Warrior.
Cool beans. -
Maybe, but look what has happened to poor old Bryan Singer. It seems like people are hoping Valkyrie is a dud.
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A guy said that to me recently. I was like wtf? Looks like it's spreading.
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On the one hand, you've got the awful reviews of Indy 4, yet with few exceptions, every fan boy is willing to lower their expecation,s and accept a shitty Indy movie for no other reason than "it's Indiana FUCKIN' Jones!".
On the other hand, you've got Speed Racer--a live-action take on a classic (but cheestastically awful) 60's cartoon, that never promised anything more than stunning visuals and a story faithful to the original source material. Yet these same fan boys who will gladly eat the shit sandwich served up by Lucas and Spielberg are criticizing Speed Racer, because it's getting bad reviews, or because the story isn't "tight"? -
I cannot believe this is getting any kind of favourable review. It's not experimental, groundbreaking or even, by the shoddy way it looks, state of the art. The design work is absolutely dreadful, cluttered and unimaginative, the directors don't even try to get a decent shot - most things are filmed, flatly, from head on. Childlike is fine in my book, childish is not.
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I really don't know what film you're talking about Shoegeezer, but we're talking about Speed Racer.
Have you even seen it, or are you talking about the trailers? I've seen it and I think it's spastically cool fun. It's not dark, it's not edgy, but it wasn't ever intended to be. As for your talk of design work, decent shots and all.. hey, it's your opionion but I and the crowd we saw it with had a great time. -
"It is the movie Willy Wonka will heretofore project onto the walls of that batshit crazy ass tunnel of his." THAT is what should go in the newspaper ads, on the poster, etc. If that doesn't make you wanna see this, STAY THE FUCK AWAY! People keep popping up telling us that this thing is negative whatever-percent on Rotten Tomatoes: who gives a crap? Do you think any of those "critics" care about Speed Racer the cartoon? They're too busy finding depth and meaning in shit like Juno and Lars and the Blow-Up Doll!!! If you liked the cartoon, you're gonna like the movie, period, The End. Everybody else: move on your way, keep your mouth shut, and count the days til the Geriatric Sex in the City movie comes out (ooh goody!).
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Okay we get that someone can be turned off by it... but unimaginative? No decent shots??? The trailers alone are chock full of crazy ass shots! And I can't even fathom anything in recent memory that looks like this... Experimental is precisely what this is! I'll hold back on the groundbreaking bit until I see it in full but I don't think they've come up with any wholly new technology wise other than a very unique and original way of using existing technology. This is the most creative thing I've ever seen coming out of Hollywood since the first Matrix!
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I liked the unique styles of Sin City and 300 as well. And you fuckers flocked to those and creamed all over it! Those 3 movies '300' 'Sin City' and soon 'Speed Racer' are pretty much style over substance... so I don't fucking get why most people will blow their loads over the former ones and not this one... is it the lack of tits and nudity?
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AWESOME...(started over here in Germany today)
Massa is dead on. If have the ability to find your inner child, this will rock you! If not and you loathed the Trailers - keep tf away!
Although they build up the ending like they did in "matrix", is that a bad thing? NO WAY -
No one in the US even remembers what Speed Racer is anymore. It will do no better than $100M.
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just came back from a screening of this movie an hour ago. Massawyrm is spot on in his review. i was getting bored during the first hour of the show. but the movie did pull itself together in the second half. some of the CGI looked pasted on, but you'd be awed by the how relistic the car drifting scenes can be! its awesome! if you can hang in there till the movie finishes, you'll find that this flick has a heart in it. its pretty touching at times esp. with the slower scenes involving mattew fox and emile hirsch. go watch it. i'm looking forward to indy next, but somehow i've got a bad feeling about it... if you know what i mean.
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pay aicn? critics everywhere are panning the flick...except for this site....come on...fess up...its ok...everyone gotta eat
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Godard, Fellini, Fassbinder, Bergman, etc. I am, probably like many of you, "a film snob." However, I am far from ignorant, and I enjoy seeing films like this, that push the boundaries of the medium, at least visually, and are created to be FUN. Speed Racer looks to be the definition of fun! The images that the W brothers have created look in-fucking-credible! No, it may not give you some existential insight, or make you reconsider your life's work or love or something, but you will probably be greatly amused, if you just let yourself be! I for one, am looking forward to seeing this tomorrow night, along with TDK and Indiana Jones later in the summer. (Been said Ad Naseum, but this is the geekiest summer since '89)
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Is it just me, or does that old issue come up every time a highly visual movie appears? I can't help thinking that by now we simply assume a stylish movie HAS to be shallow and empty. I mean, it can't possibly be both. Right? If Sin City wasn't shot on green screen, would people still have called it shallow? I dunno. Maybe we just make assumptions too quickly. Or maybe they should just get rid of the shitty (i.e. cartoony) effects in these movies (okay, Speed Racer's meant to be cartoony). It still makes me sad that so many great movies are being spoiled by shitty CGI. I can't think of any computer generated effects that haven't dated in five years or less. Most of them look crap from the start. Actually, Starship Troopers still looks good. I'm rambling...
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Will we get one for "What Happens in Vegas"? Or have you finally paid your dues and graduated to "cool" movies? Or have the powers that be taken pity on you and given you a pass on those two because they will be making you review Sex & The City?
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(AP) It may be a tricked-out ride, but Speed Racer (* ½ out of four) is too long for kids to sit still and too frenetic for their parents. Maybe teens and twentysomethings will pick up the slack.
For a movie about velocity, the excitement factor is low and the races feel like a drag. Perhaps that has a lot to do with its length: 2 hours and 15 minutes, which is at least a half-hour too long for a movie based on a cartoon. Or maybe it's the predictable story about a guy who goes up against crooked corporate sponsors.
Racer can look vibrant with its blend of live action and computer-generated animation. But the cars zipping around the track look interchangeable, and the action sequences are more video game than movie.
Writers/directors Larry and Andy Wachowski (TheMatrix trilogy) attracted some major acting talent. Emile Hirsch is fine as Speed, though the role doesn't exactly offer the challenge of his Oscar-caliber performance in Into the Wild. Christina Ricci is his girlfriend, Trixie, and Susan Sarandon and John Goodman play his parents.
But for filmmakers who pushed the envelope with the Matrix movies, Speed Racer just doesn't measure up. There are echoes of 2006's Cars and 1982's Tron — vivid special effects, the use of a video game-style competition. But it's often more garish than dazzling.
As a child, Speed Racer is not much of a scholar, preferring instead to hang around with his idol, older brother Rex. When Rex dies in a mysterious crash, Speed honors his memory by following in his footsteps.
Doggedly loyal to the family racing business, he turns down a profitable sponsorship deal from a conglomerate, so Royalton Industries' megalomaniacal owner (Roger Allam) promises to ruin Speed's career. Speed, determined to restore the family honor by competing in the cross-country rally that took his brother's life, teams up with Racer X (Matthew Fox) to expose Royalton's corruption.
Though it's a simple tale that should be understandable for viewers as young as 6, the filmmakers put so much emphasis on visual panache that narrative coherence suffers.
Yes, it's a candy-colored Day-Glo world, but there's a liveliness missing from this lead-footed Speed Racer. -
What Happens in Vegas will go live tomorrow. It isn't a curse. It's a birthright.
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anyone here even knows about Calvin and Hobbes? I would take my own life if they ever tried to make a movie out of it.
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Why oh why did you bring that up!!! you are in the Capone file now
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I seriously doubt there would ever be a Calvin & Hobbes movie, since its creator, Bill Watterson, is an arrogant prick who could care less that his cartoon is beloved by millions. In fact, he stopped creating it at the hight of its popularity, pretty much as a "fuck you" to every one of his fans. So I doubt that he could be persuaded to sign off on a movie.
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is that it's hard to properly translate an animated comic/novel/cartoon into a live-action feature. DT was an honest attempt, and visually was very appropriate, not representing an actual 20s-era city, but a cartoon version of a 20s-era city. I haven't seen the movie, or the cartoon, but it sounds like they've captured the feel of the cartoon in live-action, again not the real world, but a cartoon version of it. What I'm trying to say is that I love Calvin and Hobbes.
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why is he a prick? Did you see or read something where he came off as such? If your reason is that he quit when he was still popular, I can't fault him for that even though I'd dearly love for more strips. Not being belligerent, just curious.
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It is just my opinion of course, but Watterson has an overinflated sense of self-importance and a hypocritical attitude when it comes to his commercial work. He used the popularity of his comic strip to force newspapers into changing the rules of the format, just for him, because *he* couldn't be constrained by those rules like all the other comic strip creators that came before him.
While he wasn't afraid to use the popularity of the comic strip as financial leverage, he somewhat hypocritically objected to the commercial marketing of Calvin & Hobbes, which is why you see so little authentic Calvin & Hobbes merchandise, and why there will never be an animated movie based on the characters--not because Watterson is trying to protect his creation, but because he mistakenly believes that Calvin & Hobbes is something greater than what it really is: A commercial product created for mass consumption. -
The right one. Check it out.
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Because Watterson believed in what he was doing to the degree he did. You'd prefer it was another "Garfield"?
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There's a slow buildup, and a good payoff. The payoff is as good, it sounds, because the buildup lends weight to the film's climactic action. I liked Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions, which were reviled by many as "slow" and "boring". I look forward to "Speeed Racer".
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I was talking about and I stick to everything I said. It looks dreadful, I have seen it on a huge theatre screen digitally projected. It looks like fairground vomit, colours mixed together with no real thought put behind it. I found it ugly and tedious, kids in the audience got bored and loud before it was even 90 minutes gone. As for original? The chase in Spy Kids 3-D pretty much did it all and at least there you could tell who was chasing who.
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Garfield doesn't suck because Jim Davis markets the shit out of it. Garfield sucks because it isn't funny.
I don't object to Watterson wanting to protect his creation. What I object to is Watterson claiming that his work has value beyond its commercial nature, and shouldn't be mass marketed in order to protect its integrity-- yet he wasn't above using the commercial success of his strip as leverage to get out of the restrictions that the Syndicate puts on every other comic strip artist. It's hypocritical, IMO. -
Calvin & Hobbes was a perfect comic strip and ended when it needed to. I was extremely sad, though, when it did end (December 31, 1995).
You have to respect the hell out of Watterson. When that creative well ran dry, he finished it up. I'd rather have ten years of a great comic strip, than twenty years of a mediocre comic strip. And lets not forget, he could have made millions more on excessive marketing, but he choose to stay true to his creative vision and not whore it out like most people would have. And that certainly makes him a better man than me. Because honestly, if it was me, I would have said "whore's away." Though I don't think I would have gone as far as Lucas with 'Star Wars.' That is just sickening what he's done there.
So to wrap up, we got ten great years of one of the best comic strips ever created.
But selfishly, I would kill for another book or animated movie.
And I always thought that Maculay Culkin (spelling?) back in the 'Home Alone' days would have made a great Calvin. Not so much these days.
Average J - Out! -
Sep 01, 2008 11:12:03 PM CDT
I just woke up from the coma that Speed Racer put me in.
by thebearovingian
And for some reason I want to watch it again just to see if it was a fluke.
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