23rd
“Every once in a while I’m hit with a movie whose existence I find impossible to comprehend.”
So, I love Speed Racer. Not the cartoon, which I may possibly have seen one time long, long ago, but the movie that came out last summer. And I don’t just like it, I love it.
Besides myself and the friend I saw it with, I don’t actually know anyone who’s seen Speed Racer. I don’t even know anyone who wanted to, or wants to now. I just don’t know why this is! The movie is completely awesome! More good values than an Amanda Bynes movie! And Emile Hirsch is super hot the whole time.
There ended up being this consensus, before the movie even came out, that it sucked. It got some of the most scathingly terrible reviews I’ve ever read. And got them in bulk. These weren’t run-of-the-mill blandly negative reivews, either; Speed Racer inspired reviewers to go to almost Shakespearean lenghts to describe their intense hatred for it. Salon, for example, called it a “punishment,” “jaded and crass,” “a highly unscientific experiment designed to guage how little audiences will settle for these days,” and “an excess of nothingness.” All in one paragraph!
Many hours have been spent trying to understand what about this particular movie inspired such vitriol in its adult critics. Because—even if you can’t see its amazingness the way I can—there’s nothing about this film that makes it spectacularly worse (or, in a lot of ways, spectacularly different) that most PG adventures. There’s a good-natured hero who doesn’t quite fit in. There’s an evil villain and a supportive family. Funny jokes. Those so-called “quirky” suporting characters. And, oh yeah, intense, kaleidoscopic color that explodes across the screen about 300 times a second.
