Speed Racer IS live action anime
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.
What you have to do when going to see this movie is what I believe the reviews did not; watch the film with idea that it is an elongated episode of the show with live action characters in place of the animated ones. Once critics realize that people make these kinds of movies for entertainment and not to win awards, films like this will be appreciated for what they are and not end up the in the collection of often underrated DVDs in Wal-Mart’s 2for$11 bin.
The best thing about this movie is not the special effects, not the dialogue, not the acting, but how much the Wachowskis stuck true to the show. What other movie is there that has ridiculously gadget-hemorrhaging cars, action speed lines, and dollar-sign-eyed goons? Better yet, if you’ve seen the show, how about this???:
