As stimulating as all of this might be for the cornea, it doesn't make up for the two-hour-and-15-minute slog you have to wade through for the pleasure of watching a few measly races. Though they make up the best, most exciting parts of the movie (the dramatic parts require little more of the actors than delivering their lines), they're not much, really, in the way of action sequences.
The computer-generated backgrounds are fanciful and whimsical -- bizarre blends of far-flung exotic locations and sealed circuitry -- but it's difficult to follow what's going on with the cars.
Worse, long stretches of the movie are devoted to the advancement of a plot so perfunctory and boring -- it's a rehashed version of the battle between the little people and the evil corporation in which, of course, the little people prevail -- it could have been elimated entirely at no noticeable loss to the film. (Why do we keep paying conglomerates to supply us with this particular fantasy, anyway? Wouldn't it be more economical just to say, "You win"? Something to think about in these recessionary times.)
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Big, bad billionaire
The movie begins with the background on Speed Racer's devotion to the sport, cutting back and forth between the past and the present in a way that's sure to confuse all but the most sophisticated second-graders.
Speed's idolized older brother Rex has a run-in with a sponsor, falls out with Pops, wrecks his car (called the Mach 1) and disappears from the Racers' lives forever. Years later, Speed, now at the wheel of the famed Mach 5, follows in his brother's footsteps and soon finds himself being courted by the smarmy billionaire Royalton, who can scarcely avoid licking his chops whenever Speed enters his sights.
Pops, patriarch of the mom-and-pop operation Speed Motors, is, of course, suspicious. "This kind of company scares me," he says to Royalton when he shows up for breakfast one day. (Pancakes made by Mom, naturally, who does little else but coo supportively.) "People like you have too much money; it makes you think the rules don't apply to you."
Can one idealistic driver, his chipper girlfriend, his loving, supportive parents and the comic-relief duo of little brother and pet chimp take on a bazillion-dollar industry? Sure, with the help of his family, a mystery racer known as Racer X (Matthew Fox) and a rival megacorporation whose heir apparent (played by Korean pop star Rain) is well-positioned to win.
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Accelerates too late
Some momentum is gained toward the end, when Speed decides to enter the perilous race -- the Casa Cristo 5000 -- that supposedly killed his brother. A kung fu sequence in a CGI snowfall, in which the "Matrix bullet time effect" is modified and updated to become "Racer time" ("bullet time" with more anime-appropriate separate planes of depth), as well as a couple of well-choreographed "car fu" sequences feel like the fulfillment of something long-ago promised and forgotten.
But the fakeness of it all overwhelms, dampening any real excitement. It's hard to care about characters so stiff and one-dimensional they out-cartoon the cartoon originals, and it's hard to watch them bop around like avatars in a flat, airless, digital world.
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carina.chocano@latimes.com
"Speed Racer." MPAA rating: PG for sequences of action, some violence, language and brief smoking. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes. In wide release.
