So, the basic thrust is this:

Speed Racer (Emile Hirsch) is a born race car driver, his family; patriarch Pops (John Goodman), kindhearted Mom (Susan Sarandon), wisecracking little brother Spritle (Paulie Litt) and cheery chimpanzee Chim-Chim; builds race cars for a living, perky wannabe girlfriend Trixie (Christina Ricci) flies a pink helicopter over the race car races to let Speed know what’s going on and the mysterious masked hero and fellow driver Racer X (Matthew Fox) does all he can to watch his compatriot’s back and keep him from harm.

Emile Hirsch is at the wheel in Warner Bros' Speed Racer

Other than that, please don’t ask me to explain what the heck is going on inside Larry and Andy Wachowski’s Speed Racer. Sure there’s all this rigmarole about corporate malfeasance and espionage (all of it spearheaded by a suitably belligerent Roger Allam) but that’s so overly complicated and silly (and adds up to so very little) I wouldn’t waste much time thinking about it. No, this is a movie about flashy visuals and heartfelt family values, everything else just superfluous fodder needlessly stretching out an already far too elongated running time.

What all this adds up to is a film that’s as perplexing and annoying as it is to (as long as the wildly flamboyant racing sequences are going on) take your eyes off of. This picture comes as close to sensory overload as anything I have ever seen. Everything is painted in a supped-up digital candy coating giving the story a glossy sheen making it look like its some dynamic multicolored video game or cartoon suddenly sprung to vibrant three-dimensional life. It’s startling and shocking, and I imagine if I ever considered (which, in case you’re wondering, I won’t) doing drugs before going to the theater a screening of this would be the one I’d want to search out.

While this technical bravado and daring Tron meets Marry Poppins meets Who Framed Roger Rabbit?  expertise is certainly impressive (and even exhilarating), the storytelling is so freakishly awful there almost aren’t words to describe it. The Wachowskis aren’t so much working from a script as they are from a series of schmaltzy familial and sports movie clichés so ripe and moldy they’re practically penicillin. More, with over two full hours of them, they tend to go over about as well as one of Chin-Chin’s poo-filled cookies, some so ungodly generic and saccharine I almost had to laugh in uncomfortable embarrassment.

I can’t help but wonder what’s going on with the once on top of the world brothers Larry and Andy. Bound was a sly bit of noir nastiness impossible to forget, while I probably don’t need to tell anyone how profoundly The Matrix changed the entire sci-fi landscape. But since then the pair have become consumed by spectacle and mayhem, and while I’ll be the first to champion the giddy fun to be found in The Matrix Reloaded I’m not about to waste any of your time trying to defend the god-awful final chapter The Matrix Revolutions.

If anything, Speed Racer is far more like that particular latter disaster then it resembles any of the previous other Wachowski creations. Which is too bad, because when I say this takes things to a whole new level of cinematic creativity I really mean it. The races are like nothing ever put to celluloid, feeling and looking like sequences of a PS3 or Wii video game sprung to gigantic super-sized life. It’s like stepping inside Mario’s go-cart and speeding around the track with him, the little girl inside of me almost wanting to squeal with glee the first time Speed revs his engines and rockets away inside the pearly white Mach 5.

But pretty pictures in and of themselves do not a movie make, and once you get over the level of visual virtuosity on display it hits you just how repetitive and freakishly stupid all the rest of it is. Sure the acting is fine (and Ricci has never looked more like a living porcelain doll), and I’d imagine 12-year-old boys are probably going to eat this up with a spoon, but overall all Speed Racer did for me was give me a splitting headache. I have this sneaky suspicion the majority of audiences are going to feel exactly the same.

Film Rating: êê  (out of 4)

Additional Links:

-  Speed Racer Theatrical Trailer