Speed Racer

Ok, it's a live action remake of an old cartoon from Japan, that a lot of
Americans appear to have grown up on, and which we've barely heard of. So
they're all up in arms about their childhoods being desecrated, while we don't
give a toss and can just enjoy it for what it is.

So there's this family whose second name is Racer, who call their kid Speed. No
prizes for guessing that he's not going into chartered accountancy then. His
dad, whose name is Pops apparently, builds cars, and his sons race them for
him. Oldest son dies in a crash, so obviously Number 2 son is next up. The
third son is largely ignored and given to a chimpanzee to raise, because as a
kid with no obvious racing talent, his family clearly view him as an oxygen
thief, and hope he'll die. By the end of the movie, you will too. In fact,
let's not be coy about it, the moment you clap eyes on him, you'll hope he
catches something fatal from the doubtless copious amounts of chimpanzee shit
there must be lying around the Racer house.

So, everyone else in racing is Evil and Corrupt. Speed and his family are Good.
Game on. Basically, it's Mario Kart To The Death. OK, that's not fair. It's
F-Zero To The Death. It's a cross between Ben Hur and Charlie And The Chocolate
Factory.

Does it work? Yeah, it does actually, for basically the same reasons F-Zero
works. Driving brightly coloured cars at 500 miles an hour until all but one of
them has exploded is fun. Added into the mix is Racer X who is the mysterious
badass guy that all anime must have, and basically he and Speed belt the shit
out of everyone else until Good Prevails.

I really liked it, because it's everything *I* think car racing should be about
- i.e. driving the other bastard off the track and down a cliff. Everyone
cheats, to the point of equipping their cars with bloody great big maces and
catapults that fire beehives at their foes.

There are some crappy bits, mostly the bits where one or other of Speed's
parents buttonhole him and tell him, at length, how proud they are of him, how
much they love him, et fucking cetera. Yeah, yeah, mom. More smashy.

Christina Ricci, incidentally, is way too old to be Speed's girlfriend. But
hey, you're making a manga, the first casting consideration is REALLY REALLY
HUGE EYES.

All in all, I think this may be one of those films that kids watching it today
will still give a fuck about ten years from now. As I sat watching the credits,
a couple of kids ran past me wearing popcorn buckets for helmets going "vroom
vroom". That pretty much says it all.