Rating of
1.5/4
Way More Serious Than It Should Be
newmans_own - wrote on 05/09/08
There’s a lot of drama in a movie supposedly aimed toward children; hardly surprising, looking at who’s responsible for the film. The Wachowskis seem to forget they were making a fun action movie; most of the film is spent on long dramatic scenes surrounding each member of the Racer family that slows momentum to a complete standstill. There is so much time spent on studying the inner working of Mom and Pops Racer that Speed seems a mere afterthought until well into the film. As a result, the film is easily a half hour too long and the action sequences never quite rouse the viewer out of the distant stupor the rest of the film puts them into.
Not that any inkling of sense or understanding can be gotten from the action sequences. The film’s color scheme, obviously the filmmakers’ attempt to create a real-life anime is even more dizzying and headache-inducing than their 2D counterpart. The editing is so fast and the movement so mind-boggling (in the worst way possible) that we are forced to wait until the race ends to get a semblance of what happened.
The cast certainly doesn’t do any favors, though they aren’t given much to begin with. As Speed, Hirsch clearly looks the part but looks and sounds awkward when forced to deliver the stereotypical “let’s see what I can do” lines to his competing racers. And as Speed’s younger brother Spritle, Paul Litowsky finds himself stuck with some of the least funny comedic relief dialogue seen in quite some time and gives the worst child performance this side of Spencer Breslin. Only Ricci makes a positive impression, mostly due to the fact that she is the only element of the movie that looks like an anime convincingly brought to life.
*1/2/****
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