More on Speed Racer.

"Like so many other expensive, technologically elaborate big-screen adaptations of venerable pop-culture staples, this movie sets out to honor and refresh a youthful enthusiasm from the past and winds up smothering the fun in self-conscious grandiosity," writes AO Scott, reviewing Speed Racer for the New York Times.

"Are the Wachowski brothers the new George Lucas?" asks the New Republic's Christopher Orr:

It wasn't so long ago that the question would have been an implied compliment. But Lucas's cinematic reputation has taken a (deserved) beating in recent years, and it's in this latter sense that I suggest the comparison. Like Lucas, the Wachowskis quickly graduated from small, character-driven cinema (Bound is still my favorite of their movies) to special-effects-laden blockbusters (the Matrix trilogy). And, like Lucas, as they have focused more and more on the digitized environments in which their stories play out, they are less and less interested in the human beings trapped within them.

"Watching the old Speed Racer induced a state of Zen focus, not because so much was happening but because so little was," writes Slate's Dana Stevens - and of course, she's right on the money. Anyway: "The state of mind brought on by Speed Racer the movie is more akin to that phenomenon by which young infants, exposed to more stimuli than their systems are equipped to handle, will simply shut down."

"The picture is bankrupt in terms of everything but color, and even then, its palette suggests not careful selection but no selection," writes Salon's Stephanie Zacharek. "There isn't a single neon-jellybean or retro-flower-power color that isn't represented in Speed Racer - if a color is bright, it's in there. That's not visual boldness; it's cowardice - and that's only the beginning of the picture's problems."

"From the start, Andy and Larry Wachowski have been full of it - they never really wanted to fight the Matrix, they wished to become its servants." Michael Joshua Rowin in Stop Smiling.

"Painting with CGI, the Wachowskis have constructed a candy-colored future so wholly artificial that the humans appear out of place, grafted crudely onto a world that's evolved past them," writes Scott Tobias at the AV Club. "Granted, Hollywood blockbusters like 300 and Beowulf have recently expanded the potential of digital effects, but with nothing like the aggression of Speed Racer, which is borderline-experimental in the way it challenges the limits of perception. It's forward-thinking, visionary, and much of the time unwatchable."

"Forget all the curmudgeonly criticism that argues for this movie's optical overload capacity - Speed Racer is a modern masterpiece, no two ways about it," argues Bill Gibron at PopMatters.

"For a movie about speed and forward momentum, Speed Racer provides very little of either, though it does explode into spurts of frenetic, confusing and hard-to-follow action - and that's just on the racetracks," writes Carina Chocano in the Los Angeles Times.

"You have to be 12 to like it, and I have to say there is little or nothing here to remind us why we were all quite so excited about The Matrix," writes the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw.

"The 'what' and 'why' of the Wachowskis' Speed Racer remains at the starting line for a full 135 minutes," writes Bruce Bennett in the New York Sun.

"The least pardonable aspect of the whole enterprise is its length," writes the Independent's Anthony Quinn.

"This garish, aimless film wore out its welcome (and its crayon box) after about 25 minutes, but the cinematic eyesore just kept lumbering on for two full hours," agrees Scott Weinberg at Cinematical.

"The film's slow middle may lose the 7-year-olds that it clearly covets, though an insufferable kid and his chimpanzee make frequent appearances, shocking youngsters back to consciousness like a slapstick defibrillator," writes Robert Davis in Paste. "But for those of us a bit older, any amount of chimp, like asbestos, is too much."

"[W]hile absurd racing games that laugh in the face of Sir Isaac Newton can be fun to play, they're certainly not very fun to watch, especially for two hours straight burdened by merciless editing and lousy subplots," writes the IFC's Matt Singer.

The Oregonian's Shawn Levy finds it a "daffy" but "frequently startling trip."

"After giving Iron Man a pass, critics generally seem to have knives out for Speed Racer, despite the fact that Speed boasts the most radical visual strategies seen in a movie theater since Sin City, and maybe longer," writes Bryant Frazer. "Yes, of course 'unconventional' is not equivalent to 'excellent' or even 'interesting,' and I guess I can understand why you might not want to let the Wachowskis play your optic nerve like a Jew's harp for more than two hours in a sitting. But, man, if you value a little razzle with your dazzle, this one delivers a lot more of that stuff than, say, Iron Man."

The Telegraph's Sukhdev Sandhu: "It's stupid, but - no: and - I loved it."

Posted by dwhudson at May 10, 2008 9:08 AM