Day 10 - Speed Racer (2008)

The list of live-action films based on kids' cartoons isn't exactly an illustrious one. Within the past fifteen years or so, the live iterations of Dragonball Z, Avatar: the Last Airbender, Marmaduke and Yogi Bear have all bombed, not to mention multiple incarnations of Garfield and Scooby Doo. I've actually caught one or two of these, owing to my predilection for watching bad family movies on TV on a Sunday afternoon, and they're mostly sugar-sweet, hyperactive, hypersaturated trash, with clumsy slapstick and a couple of gross-out gags.

Speed Racer, the Wachowski Bros' remake of Japanese cartoon Mach GoGoGo, retains the clumsy slapstick and gross-out gags, but differs from the above titles by being a sugar-sweet, hyperactive, hypersaturated diamond.

The good

Ye gods, but this movie is beautiful. Like, tears-to-the-eyes beautiful. At various points it shimmers, sparkles, glitters and gleams, with complex animated backgrounds that somehow never obscure the foreground action. The cars are sleek and elegant, while the human protagonists are as boldly delineated as though they'd just stepped straight off the pages of Archie Comics. In an era where the likes of Tim Burton and Aardman Animations have made the grotesque desirable, it's really enjoyable to see a film that eschews ugliness in the same way that Christopher Nolan movies eschew charm.

As might be expected from a live-action cartoon, performances are larger than life - they need to be, given the canvas on which they're painted. As villain E.P. Arnold Royalton, Roger Allam personifies the word oleaginous, while Susan Sarandon is charming and encouraging as Mom Racer. Credit must be given, too, to Emile Hirsch and Christina Ricci as Speed and Trixie respectively. As the young romantic leads they display a genuine, believable chemistry that stands out amidst all the visual pyrotechnics.

Plot and storytelling are sound too, for the most part, although large parts of the Casa Christo Rally during the second part appear to have ended up on the cutting room floor. While the central narrative remains coherent and (reasonably) compelling, the racing sequences are the film's strongest and despite the two hour running time, I'd have relished the chance to see more of them.

The bad

A lot of critics really, really hated this one and I'm genuinely not sure why - in many instances, after all, these are the same individuals who lauded Moulin Rouge!, and the two films share a surprising amount of common ground. They both deal in visual and emotional excess; substitute racing sequences for musical numbers and the only real difference is the target audience. 

The fact remains, however, that Speed Racer is not a subtle film; it's almost as heavy with the down-home sentiment as it is with the CGI. Stylised and stylish, it might leave even those raised on or accustomed to Pixar's technicolor odysseys reaching for the migraine tablets.

I didn't especially appreciate the slapstick, either, but I'm pretty sure this is the sort of thing the under-ten set love; likewise the multiple gags where a pet chimp flings its faeces. More to the point, I'm not delighted by the use of a chimp as a performer at all - even lower primates can never be truly domesticated, and regardless of the original material I'm sure little would have been lost by using, say, a dog instead.

The verdict

Visually stunning, Speed Racer delivers on almost every level. You owe it to your kids to show them this film because if you don't, they'll be raised by Disney and eventually grow into Michael Bay fans. Don't say I didn't warn you.