Go Speed Racer, Go!

A bunch of us went on Friday to see the latest Wachowski Brothers film, the live action adaptation of Speed Racer.

Holy. Crap. It was like a someone dumped a gallon of California Sunshine directly into my cerebral cortex. The vivid colors, the hyperfocused scenes, the freakish wipes and the special effects generally were almost too much to take in. The plot was not really that deep as one might expect from the cartoon. Basically there's this guy Speed Racer of the Racer family who lives to, well, race. There are some people determined to keep him from racing. The races of the future (or in some alternate reality, it's hard to tell) are kind of beautiful, as if you did an auto race on roller coaster. At the same time, they're totally brutal with all the racers doing whatever it takes to disable their opponents. The talky parts were nothing to write home about, but mercifully were not a major part of the film. The movie has races, kung fu, chimpanzees, and the occasional ninja. It almost made me a little queasy at times, because frequently the angles kept changing very wildly, very rapidly. Did I mention the crazy colors? It's really hard to describe, (like the Matrix) but I'd say go for the special effects, stay for the mind blowing special effects.