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SPEED RACER

By the time I went to see Speed Racer, I kinda didn’t want to see it. I knew it had been getting bad reviews, and frankly the trailers hadn’t sold me…so flashy, and well, cartoony.

But I saw Speed Racer, and it was pretty cool.
Now, it IS too flashy and way over the top. The old school cartoon it’s based on was, um, more realistic. You know, for a cartoon. This movie is set in a world where racetracks are these neon, space age monstrosities that kinda give me a headache.

But the movie is pretty cool. The cast is good, though I especially liked Matthew Fox as Racer X, since he was the only one that spoke in that hurried anime style. Emile Hirsch was fine as Speed Racer, and John Goodman and Susan Sarandon are really great as his parents. I don’t remember Trixie being such a bad-ass, but Christina Ricci’s take on her was pretty cool. Paulie Litt was obnoxiously over the top as Spritle, Speed’s little brother who’s never without Chim Chim, the family chimpanzee…I mean, what family doesn’t have a chimpanzee…but Litt steals every scene he’s in, so I guess that’s cool.

Speed Racer was written and directed by the The Wachowski Brothers, but it doesn’t feel like their movie. I mean, at times there are some action scenes that look like they could have been out of The Matrix, but overall, Speed Racer is really an over the top, hyper-kinetic family film.

B -

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