Sunday, May 11, 2008
SPEED RACER
We caught "Speed Racer" yesterday, it's a remake of an old show, but the story is pretty much the same.Born to race cars, Speed Racer (Emile Hirsch) is aggressive, instinctive and, most of all, fearless. His only real competition is the memory of the brother he idolized—the legendary Rex Racer, whose death in a race has left behind a legacy that Speed is driven to fulfill. Speed is loyal to the family racing business, led by his father, Pops Racer (John Goodman), the designer of Speed's thundering Mach 5.
When Speed turns down a lucrative and tempting offer from Royalton Industries, he not only infuriates the company's maniacal owner (Roger Allam) but uncovers a terrible secret—some of the biggest races are being fixed by a handful of ruthless moguls who manipulate the top drivers to boost profits. If Speed won't drive for Royalton, Royalton will see to it that the Mach 5 never crosses another finish line. The only way for Speed to save his family's business and the sport he loves is to beat Royalton at his own game.
With the support of his family and his loyal girlfriend, Trixie (Christina Ricci), Speed teams with his one-time rival—the mysterious Racer X (Matthew Fox)—to win the race that had taken his brother's life: the death-defying, cross-country rally known as The Crucible.
Okay. Maybe I am an old-fashioned movie go-er. But this movie is just too filled with an overly exaggerated abundance of technicolour, practically every scene (except the home of the racer family) was CGI-ed. The whole movie was probably filmed against a blue backdrop for the duration of the whole movie. The scene transitions were just mind-bogglingly complicated, and the opulence of the Royalton scene was just too extravagant.
Okay, the Crucible race proved to wow audience with several interesting scenes with the powerful T180 equipped with weapons fighting each other. The whole scene was somewhat like the podracer race in "Star Wars Episode 1". Where powerful vehicles raced across the terrain fighting each other in a bid to lead.
I think there were too many bullet-time scenes, too many unbelievable actions that defy physics. (Maybe it's just a movie after all), but the CGI animation wasn't fluid enough to be seamless in it's transition. The movie overall attempted to broach topics like family love, support, evils, greed, morals, determination, frustration, despair, triumph amongst others.
I thought the little brother of Speed was really irritating with the pet chimpanzee. Those scenes were quite redundant though several tried to inject humor into the movie. The story had a very predictable plot, and when Racer-X turned up, one can almost immediately tell that it was Speed's elder brother REX, though when he first took off his mask, we were al l fooled, when the Grand Prix race started and Racer-X smiled, you KNOW it's REX. It was all just too coincidental.
But that kind of brotherly love is really admirable in the movie. Still I didn't like the prismatic dazzling display of colors that filled every scene till the ends of the visible spectrum. Everything was just too colorful like the "Curse of the golden flower" and it puts a strain on your eyes especially when the movie was an excruciating 2 hours 15 minutes!
The movie is too long for the story, there were too many scenes, the whole movie is practically a kaleidoscopic myriad of shimmering brightness and heavily contrasting scene animation and backdrops. The extreme use of CGI was a poor decision over to a point where it dulls the meaning of the show!
Some aspects of the characters were not developed well enough, like Speed himself, too little time was spent on him and because of that, his strength, and determination and will-power were sometimes doubtful and plausible.
3 / 5 for effort.
