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From what I’ve read in the reviews, this movie is extremely underrated. Usually, a movie being rated as low as this one means two things: A) the reviewer really didn’t understand what the movie-makers were trying to do or convey, or B) the movie just really sucked.

So here we have Speed Racer, the newest film by the creators of the Matrix movies and fictitious world. A flick highly anticipated by myself and some colleagues, and quite frankly advertised as two hours of eye-candy.

I’d like to point out first off that if you’re wondering what the movie is like if you haven’t seen it yet, it’s basically 120 minutes of trailer-esque cinema; pumped full of anime-related humor, dialogue, and cinematography. Basically, if you liked what you saw in the trailer and you were any sort of fan of the show, be it a religious watcher or in passing, go see this movie. I went into it as someone who used to watch the seemingly endless re-runs on Cartoon Network over a decade ago and always thought it would be cool to see it live action.

Here’s where my complaint about bad reviews comes in. I’m not going to sit here and tell you why “Speed Racer is the best movie ever made!”, or rave up and down how cool it was like some lame-ass fanboy groupie. Instead I’ll just tell you straight up that if you admire, at all, the style of anime from the ’60s and ’70s and have any sort of imagination of how it could be conveyed in live action (or any imagination at all…) that this IS the best movie for that. I sat through the entire film laughing my ass off at how amazingly simple yet complex everything about the movie was and how well the Wachowski brothers were able to bring this depth-less show to life.

Going and standing in line at midnight in front of a Gamestop with a bunch of sweaty smelly game nerds has never really been my cup of joe. I recall the morning of November 9, 2004 at Full Sail; coming in at 9am only to find that I was the only one awake in class. Oh, that’s right…you’re all dumbasses. I drove by the Gamestop outside the Fashion Square Mall to see all you kids lined up outside the Ruby Tuesday next door awaiting the follow-up to the viral yet entertaining ilovebees.com.

I just couldn’t help but think to myself how impatient people are, that they couldn’t just wait til’ the next day to spend that 50-60 bucks depending on which version they reserved. 1pm rolls around and I bounce from class straight to Circuit City right down the road from the drive-by I performed the night before, waltzed in, grabbed a special edition of Halo 2, threw down some wadded up cash that probably belonged to a few pizza delivery guys, walked out, popped the game in, and enjoyed myself for a good four hours or so on an eight foot projected screen surrounded by 1500 watts of speakers, all until I had to go back to class. (sentence fragment; consider revising) No, that’s not really a text error; I put it there to fool you… because I’m awesome. 😛

That all changed April 29th…or I guess technically April 30th. I’d stopped playing every other game days before because I was so excited about the one I’m about to mention. I’ve anticipated EVERY aspect of this game; graphics, AI, gameplay, PHYSICS. Yes, I stood in front of a Gamestop at midnight. No, I wasn’t standing there for hours. I showed up at midnight. So shut-up.

What’s that? You want to know what game I’m talking about? Oh, sorry…Grand Theft Auto IV. I was amazed the second the opening cut-scene started, “And you can too!”. The technique of integrating credits into the environment is genius. You’d think, “Who’d look at that stuff?” It’s actually quite hard (for me anyway) not to look at it. Excellent stuff.