Movie Critic

DESCRIPTIVE CRITICISM

The candy-colored adrenaline-surged thrill ride known as Speed Racer is an absolutely discombobulating affair . It is either one of the most dizzyingly incomprehensible mass-market all-ages motion pictures of all time , or the most expensive visual experiment that has ever been made Adapted from a Japanese animated TV series embraced by American children in the late 1960s , Speed Racer centers itself on the trials and tribulations of the Racer family and their velocity addicted racing prodigy son , Speed , played by Emile Hirsch , the quirkily earnest youth from Imaginary Heroes and

The Girl Next Door

A glamorously post-linear opening sequence notwithstanding , the movie unfolds in relatively straightforward fashion , though the Wachowskis can 't resist an occasional temporal hiccup . Speed and his family (John Goodman as protective Pops , Susan Sarandon as encouraging Mom , Paulie Litt as charmingly annoying Spritle , and pet chimp Chim-Chim ) and girlfriend Trixie (Christina Ricci , at her most fetching in a Louise Brooks inspired hairbob ) visit the big city at the invitation of automobile mogul E .

. Arnold Royalton (Roger Allam , who seeks to smooth talk them into a corporate sponsorship , but they turn him down

In response , Royalton sneers at Pop Racer 's backyard mechanic ethic , and goes on a tirade about how the corporate arms of racing always rule the house - that all the Grand Prix races were fixed , and if the Racers don 't play along they 'll get shut out of racing entirely and Racer Motors will be disgraced . Royalton 's threats unfold visually in some strange temporal space in which they are simultaneously the future and the present all at once

Despite Pops ' insistence that you can 't change the world by racing cars ' Speed joins an investigative committee /anti-trust task force comprised of the masked Racer X (Matthew Fox , the ethically flexible Taejo Togokhan (played rather shiftily by Asian pop star Rain ) and the dutiful Inspector Detector (Benno Furmann . They go on a cross country rally known as Casa Cristo against an ethnically and culturally diverse pack of unscrupulous cheaters

All of this culminates in an ultimate race at the Grand Prix to prove the value of old-fashioned sportsmanship , unmeddled by corporate interest , where Speed races as an independent contender against the dozens of corporate backed players in an event that has become a meaningless exercise in spectacle

INTERPRETATIVE CRITICISM

Speed Racer is quite probably the most explicitly anti-capitalist film with a fast-food merchandising tie in . For a film that is marketed heavily as a celebration of lowest common denominator spectacle and high octane entertainment , it wears a trenchantly independent spirit on its sleeve by choosing themes which celebrate the battle between working-class artisans and romising sportsmen against the deeply parasitical relationship between sporting events and conglomerated automobile manufacturers

The Racer family and Racer Motors are portrayed as part of a dying breed of DIY craftsmen , while Speed represents the last in a tradition of drivers who maintain a `pure ' interest in the sport of racing , and the honor of racing for...