May 15th, 2008
by Michael Swanberg
The Summer movie season has begun in earnest. I saw “Speed Racer” last night and here is what I thought.
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Remakes are so risky. Especially in the common vein these days of remaking comic books or cartoons. In remaking them, you have to make a huge decision: do I make it like the original, or do I try to make a “realistic” movie based on the original? Either way, you’ll probably tick off half your potential audience. “Speed Racer” both succeeds and fails all at once.
Okay, so let’s set the scene. I am rapidly approaching the point in my life where I have to put a “4″ at the beginning of my age. As such, you can bet that I was around when “Speed Racer” the cartoon was on television. I lived and breathed that show. In fact, I wanted to be either a racecar driver or a racecar mechanic when I grew up. So much so that I can recall the look on my mom’s face when the winning word in my grade school spelling bee was “mechanic.” My mom smiled and sighed relief. She knew that I could spell that word because it was what I wanted to be.
In any case, “Speed Racer” was in my blood, in my bones. So when I heard that they were remaking it as a live-action movie, my first reaction was, “oh hell… they’re going to screw it up.” Then I saw the trailer… so campy and colorful and full of action-for-the-sake-of-action that all I could think was, “yup, they’re screwing it up.” Then I was walking in Target a few weeks ago and passed the toy section and saw a miniature toy car… The “Mach 6″.
The “MACH 6?!?!?!?!?!” All I could think was, “OW! My childhood!!”
But then, I grew up on “Speed Racer.” I simply had to see the movie… good or bad. I had to do it. I literally had no choice.
And I loved it!
This movie IS “Speed Racer.” I am not even saying it’s a remake. It simply IS “Speed Racer.” Just with live actors.
I admit, the first 15 minutes of the movie are so horrible that I wanted to walk out. Literally, I thought, “I can leave now and save the remnants of my childhood memories, intact.” But I stuck it out. The first 15 minutes of the film are a clutter of flashbacks and disjointed bits that come at you at… ummm… let’s just say five times the speed of sound. But the first part of the movie is kind of necessary to establish the characters and who they are and where they came from. It was in the theater that I realized that if you take “Rex Racer” (Speed’s older brother) and reverse it to “Racer, Rex” and then say it quickly, it becomes “Racer X.” Duh! I mean, I knew that Racer X is Speed’s brother. That was well-established in the show. But it was an “oh, I was so naive in my youth” moment.
In any case, since they don’t have many many hours of TV to establish the characters, they have to do it all at once. And therein is the first bit of the movie. After that, it really picked up. The story came together and became linear and even quite interesting. The races were off-the-hook crazy and incredibly implausible, but oh-so-action-packed!
They did a great job of answering my questions. The Mach 4 was Rex’s racecar. The Mach 5 later became his car, but it was more for driving around, not racing. When he left to go become Racer X (spoiler alert: Racer X is Speed’s brother! And Darth Vader is Luke’s father!) he pitched the Mach 5 keys to Speed. The Mach 6 is the next generation and is Speed’s car for track races. In case you’re wondering, Speed does race the Mach 5 in a “road” race, which resembles the races in the show: cross country, through mountains and such. Very cool. And they also explained all of the Mach 5 gadgets. They were added as defensive measures against the other drivers whom all seem to cheat voraciously.
So here’s the deal. Anyone under the age of about 38 isn’t going the “get” this movie. Anyone who didn’t watch “Speed Racer” as a kid won’t get this movie. Anyone who didn’t love “Speed Racer” as a kid won’t love this movie. But if you are like me, over 38, watched “Speed” as a kid, and loved it, well then you are in for a treat, my friend, because you will love this movie! Anyone else, well, you’ll probably watch and say to yourself, “well, this is kind of lame.”
So back to the original premise of my thoughts, which is that remakes are risky. I sure would have loved a “realistic” re-imagining, a la the new Battlestar Galactica or “Batman Begins.” There could have been a whole new generation falling in love with a new Speed Racer. But instead, the Wachowski brothers decided to make a full-on homage to the original show. This will delight fans of the original to no end, but will probably alienate most others. It’s a visual delight with tons of edge-of-your-seat off-the-hook action, and is most likely destined to be a cult classic and little more, but in the end, I can see a lot of people shrugging their shoulders and saying, “hmmm, so what?” My girlfriend (under 38 and didn’t watch the TV show) was far more delighted by my loving the movie than she was in the movie itself. Her comments were, “yeah, it was good,” and that’s about it. In fact, she made more comments about my ability to wade through a bucket of popcorn than she did about the movie. But I didn’t get the impression that she hated it either. (Note: she’s not the typical girl in movie selection; she likes “Die Hard” more than “Sex in the City”).
So there it is. My review is definitely a mixed bag. If you loved the TV show, you’ll love the movie. If not, then you may still like the movie, but I’ll bet you won’t be super-excited about it.
