Speed Racer

I will give credit to the Wachowski Brothers for pretty much pulling off an honest-to-goodness live-action anime with plenty of pizazz, nifty intermingling swipes and fades and other transitional devices. Plus the inclusion of the drifting head with dialogue shots so prevalent in the cartoons, just a lot of real nice attention to detail. The dual-focus system (keeping 2 people in focus even if one is in the foreground and the other is in the background) worked to mimic the cartoon look in some scenes, though it sometimes looked like they just spliced 2 heads into one shot to get that effect (then again, perhaps they film both people in the same frame and did figure out how to do the dual-focus for this film).

Not only were the Wachowski brothers slavish to the look of anime, but also the style of the storytelling in setting up the backstory in the first act, with fades into/out of the character's recollection of what happened in the past that impacted who they are in the present. Some of the bits worked well, other scenes looked odd. I wasn't all that entertained in the first act, but it got better in the middle act (most of it due to the racing, and some funny hand-to-hand combat), and then finds its stride in the final act. The setup in the first act might have gotten a little too convoluted for little ones to follow, but thankfully the rest of the plot is easy to follow, and the viewers are treated to a lot of razzle-dazzle racing sequences.

If you have any interest in Speed Racer, or live-action anime, or racing, or chimps, then you might enjoy most of this film, but it runs a little long at 135 minutes. Spritle and Chim-Chim both steal almost every scene they show up in, while the rest of the cast plays it straight for the most part, though Emile Hirsch just wasn't all that charismatic to me in the titular role.

I give it 2.75 stars, or a grade of B- (mainly for the sheer amount of cinematic ingenuity on display)