SPEED RACER
SPEED RACER
May 5 2008, Regal Lloyd Cinemas 10
Here's my theory:
The Wachowski Brothers were watching Speed Racer cartoons one day, off their faces on E. They both had spontaneous orgasms, then jumped up and licked the TV screen. They took on lifelong happy memories of that day. The Wachowski Brothers made loads and loads of money on their movies, and maintained their "artistic integrity" (i.e. whatever they do, they make money), thus justifying every single thing they ever wanted to do, ever, without shame or hindrance. Then the Wachowski Brothers bought all the Ecstasy in the world. Just all of it. They bought out the world's supply. They holed up in their spooky castle in Europe and took all the E over the course of a month, writing dialogue, scribbling storyboards, doing the tripper equivalent of drunk-dialing all their moviemaking genius pals and pitching this idea over and over again, causing a hypnotic effect.
It could look really, really, really cool, you guys. Money is no object. Think of just how cool it could look.
The Wachowski Brothers made SPEED RACER.
The Wachowski Brothers were really, really high.
What makes them geniuses, and most druggy weirdos are not geniuses, is that their crazy, ridiculous, stoned ideas can actually get made. If I had a bajillion dollars, trust me, the world would be rocked to see the kinds of things I envision when I'm tripping my face off. But because I don't, it doesn't. They turned their love of anime and kung-fu movies (and making movies themselves; it is a calling for some) into bajillions of dollars.
I also have this love, and so I love their movies. If you don't have this love, for God's sake, under no circumstances see SPEED RACER. For that matter, if you don't looooooove CGI like it's that cutie in tenth grade you crushed on like crazy but could never ask out because s/he was so perrrrfect, under no circumstances see SPEED RACER. If you don't love kitschy, primary-colored fashions or atrocious 1970s home decor in a way that's more sincere than ironic, under no circumstances see SPEED RACER. If you do not love relentless action chase sequences, under no circumstances see SPEED RACER.
OK, now that I've winnowed you down, this is what the rest of you can expect:
My God, the dialogue is bad. I would also say that the acting is just as bad, but John Goodman (looking trim these days! Good; don't die on us, man) and Susan Sarandon can't help but inject actual feelings into what they do. And that's a problem. It has no place here. Human feelings just get in the way of the pretty and the violence and the velocity. Seriously. And it's not just their fault - there's some decent actors in this bunch besides Mom and Pops Racer (really? It's their surname? I never knew that); Christina Ricci has done good work (elsewhere), Hiroyuki Sanada is in it for some reason, and randomly Richard Roundtree is there, too. (WTF?) But every time a human being walked onto that screen, I groaned out loud. The kids in the audience got restless. During the racing scenes, they were silent and still. See? This isn't a good family movie, either. The kids get bored during the dialogue. That's not what we want. It's like my theory on why I loved THE PHANTOM MENACE so much when I first saw it; if the whole movie was just the podracing, it'd be brilliant, and that's all I came away with; that sequence was awesome. SPEED RACER has "corrected" this by having much more than half of the film be mere velocity with a minimum of dialogue (which, STAR WARS style, is even cheesier, but you don't care because you're caught up in the awesome), but it still has people in it. When will they ever learn?
So it's kind of like TRON. And in my ideal world, I'll be able to re-edit movies to just the awesome parts. (Yes, I know that ideal world exists now, but I don't live in it. Soon, by the laws of increasing processor power at decreasing prices, I'm sure I will.) In this, compress the human element to a swiftly passing montage of concerned or enthusiastic faces, no more than thirty seconds in length, and then back to the racing cars and flashing lights.
Emile Hirsch plays Speed, and he looks just like a gene splice frankenbaby of Hayden Christensen and Ewan McGregor. I am not joking. He has the slow smile of Hayden, and the knitted brow of Ewan, plus the drooping spit-curl. And yet, he's not hot. Maybe it's because he's in a movie with not just "Made-of-Sex" Hiroyuki Sanada, but "Made-out-of-Hot-Sex" Karl Yune. Christina Ricci adds way too much sex appeal to Trixie, but I can't really say I mind. (What I mind is her whole character in this movie. I love Trixie in the cartoon - a lot - and this is not quite her.) Speed's nemesis, Royalton (a totally made-up character) is played by Roger Allam, because maybe Tim Curry wasn't on the Wachowski Rolodex. (You and I both know well that Curry would leap at the chance to do this, or pretty much anything else.) Royalton is a big nasty corporateer who wants Speed to race for him, but the aggressively wholesome Speed is suspicious of anything corporate and tells Royalton to fuck off. Royalton then does everything in his villainous power to slow Speed down (bring him to a halt? I don't know. The punworthy copy just writes itself). Speed is haunted by the mildly incesty memory of his brother, Rex, the best racer evar, but who supposedly got killed in a crash. Who's with me in guessing that he's not really dead, and might instead be housed in the body of taciturn leather daddy Racer X, the best racer evar? In my favorite pleasant surprise of the film, Racer X is perfectly portrayed by Matthew Fox, who I have learned to despise the sight of on Lost. I may hate Jack Shepard, but I sure do love Racer X, and Fox is as perfect to play the role as if he'd been engineered in a vat for the purpose. He is visibly struggling to hold back giggles at the cringeworthy dialogue, and I kind of love him for that.
My favorite line from the movie is "Inspector Detector suspected foul play." Say it out loud to yourself. Isn't that fun? Inspector Detector himself is played by a white guy, the almost as beautifully named Benno Fürmann, who looks so much like Hiroyuki Sanada that I thought that the Japanese master was doing a double role. It's a shame that Benno's accent is so impenatrably thick that if he had anything to say about his suspicion, I have no idea what it was.
God, what a mess. But it's beautiful. The real star of the movie is John Gaeta, visual effects supervisor- he was the one that made THE MATRIX magical. In my ideal world he would just get goverment grants to do his work, but I imagine he makes a lot more working for the Wachowskis (and in Euros, too, probably). I kind of want to have his baby. He's the best thing about Wachowski movies, and why I never, ever miss the opportunity to see them on the big screen. SPEED RACER, I think, will be largely pointless on a home-viewing screen; there's more detail than the eye can possibly take in, even on a theatrical screen. I think I want to do IMAX. I think that'd be worth the money, especially if I go to the bathroom whenever anybody starts to talk.
I am very interested in seeing how this film is received by the general public. I didn't think people would be that into THE MATRIX, either, but we all know what happened there. So we'll see. I just don't know; I just get the impression that most people will hate it. I kind of did, but I also thoroughly loved it and can't stop thinking about it. Just not the characters.
May 5 2008, Regal Lloyd Cinemas 10
Here's my theory:
The Wachowski Brothers were watching Speed Racer cartoons one day, off their faces on E. They both had spontaneous orgasms, then jumped up and licked the TV screen. They took on lifelong happy memories of that day. The Wachowski Brothers made loads and loads of money on their movies, and maintained their "artistic integrity" (i.e. whatever they do, they make money), thus justifying every single thing they ever wanted to do, ever, without shame or hindrance. Then the Wachowski Brothers bought all the Ecstasy in the world. Just all of it. They bought out the world's supply. They holed up in their spooky castle in Europe and took all the E over the course of a month, writing dialogue, scribbling storyboards, doing the tripper equivalent of drunk-dialing all their moviemaking genius pals and pitching this idea over and over again, causing a hypnotic effect.
It could look really, really, really cool, you guys. Money is no object. Think of just how cool it could look.
The Wachowski Brothers made SPEED RACER.
The Wachowski Brothers were really, really high.
What makes them geniuses, and most druggy weirdos are not geniuses, is that their crazy, ridiculous, stoned ideas can actually get made. If I had a bajillion dollars, trust me, the world would be rocked to see the kinds of things I envision when I'm tripping my face off. But because I don't, it doesn't. They turned their love of anime and kung-fu movies (and making movies themselves; it is a calling for some) into bajillions of dollars.
I also have this love, and so I love their movies. If you don't have this love, for God's sake, under no circumstances see SPEED RACER. For that matter, if you don't looooooove CGI like it's that cutie in tenth grade you crushed on like crazy but could never ask out because s/he was so perrrrfect, under no circumstances see SPEED RACER. If you don't love kitschy, primary-colored fashions or atrocious 1970s home decor in a way that's more sincere than ironic, under no circumstances see SPEED RACER. If you do not love relentless action chase sequences, under no circumstances see SPEED RACER.
OK, now that I've winnowed you down, this is what the rest of you can expect:
My God, the dialogue is bad. I would also say that the acting is just as bad, but John Goodman (looking trim these days! Good; don't die on us, man) and Susan Sarandon can't help but inject actual feelings into what they do. And that's a problem. It has no place here. Human feelings just get in the way of the pretty and the violence and the velocity. Seriously. And it's not just their fault - there's some decent actors in this bunch besides Mom and Pops Racer (really? It's their surname? I never knew that); Christina Ricci has done good work (elsewhere), Hiroyuki Sanada is in it for some reason, and randomly Richard Roundtree is there, too. (WTF?) But every time a human being walked onto that screen, I groaned out loud. The kids in the audience got restless. During the racing scenes, they were silent and still. See? This isn't a good family movie, either. The kids get bored during the dialogue. That's not what we want. It's like my theory on why I loved THE PHANTOM MENACE so much when I first saw it; if the whole movie was just the podracing, it'd be brilliant, and that's all I came away with; that sequence was awesome. SPEED RACER has "corrected" this by having much more than half of the film be mere velocity with a minimum of dialogue (which, STAR WARS style, is even cheesier, but you don't care because you're caught up in the awesome), but it still has people in it. When will they ever learn?
So it's kind of like TRON. And in my ideal world, I'll be able to re-edit movies to just the awesome parts. (Yes, I know that ideal world exists now, but I don't live in it. Soon, by the laws of increasing processor power at decreasing prices, I'm sure I will.) In this, compress the human element to a swiftly passing montage of concerned or enthusiastic faces, no more than thirty seconds in length, and then back to the racing cars and flashing lights.
Emile Hirsch plays Speed, and he looks just like a gene splice frankenbaby of Hayden Christensen and Ewan McGregor. I am not joking. He has the slow smile of Hayden, and the knitted brow of Ewan, plus the drooping spit-curl. And yet, he's not hot. Maybe it's because he's in a movie with not just "Made-of-Sex" Hiroyuki Sanada, but "Made-out-of-Hot-Sex" Karl Yune. Christina Ricci adds way too much sex appeal to Trixie, but I can't really say I mind. (What I mind is her whole character in this movie. I love Trixie in the cartoon - a lot - and this is not quite her.) Speed's nemesis, Royalton (a totally made-up character) is played by Roger Allam, because maybe Tim Curry wasn't on the Wachowski Rolodex. (You and I both know well that Curry would leap at the chance to do this, or pretty much anything else.) Royalton is a big nasty corporateer who wants Speed to race for him, but the aggressively wholesome Speed is suspicious of anything corporate and tells Royalton to fuck off. Royalton then does everything in his villainous power to slow Speed down (bring him to a halt? I don't know. The punworthy copy just writes itself). Speed is haunted by the mildly incesty memory of his brother, Rex, the best racer evar, but who supposedly got killed in a crash. Who's with me in guessing that he's not really dead, and might instead be housed in the body of taciturn leather daddy Racer X, the best racer evar? In my favorite pleasant surprise of the film, Racer X is perfectly portrayed by Matthew Fox, who I have learned to despise the sight of on Lost. I may hate Jack Shepard, but I sure do love Racer X, and Fox is as perfect to play the role as if he'd been engineered in a vat for the purpose. He is visibly struggling to hold back giggles at the cringeworthy dialogue, and I kind of love him for that.
My favorite line from the movie is "Inspector Detector suspected foul play." Say it out loud to yourself. Isn't that fun? Inspector Detector himself is played by a white guy, the almost as beautifully named Benno Fürmann, who looks so much like Hiroyuki Sanada that I thought that the Japanese master was doing a double role. It's a shame that Benno's accent is so impenatrably thick that if he had anything to say about his suspicion, I have no idea what it was.
God, what a mess. But it's beautiful. The real star of the movie is John Gaeta, visual effects supervisor- he was the one that made THE MATRIX magical. In my ideal world he would just get goverment grants to do his work, but I imagine he makes a lot more working for the Wachowskis (and in Euros, too, probably). I kind of want to have his baby. He's the best thing about Wachowski movies, and why I never, ever miss the opportunity to see them on the big screen. SPEED RACER, I think, will be largely pointless on a home-viewing screen; there's more detail than the eye can possibly take in, even on a theatrical screen. I think I want to do IMAX. I think that'd be worth the money, especially if I go to the bathroom whenever anybody starts to talk.
I am very interested in seeing how this film is received by the general public. I didn't think people would be that into THE MATRIX, either, but we all know what happened there. So we'll see. I just don't know; I just get the impression that most people will hate it. I kind of did, but I also thoroughly loved it and can't stop thinking about it. Just not the characters.