It’s Going to Be a Bumpy One

From the visionary directors of The Matrix, the Wachowski brothers, comes the in-development-since-the-early-1990s live action film adaptation of the 1960s Japanese anime series Speed Racer, starring Almost It Boy Emile Hirsch.

I say Hirsch is an Almost It Boy because the Wachowskis have done him – and their audience, really – a disservice by favoring style over substance in their first, overindulgent delivery since 2003’s The Matrix Revolutions.

Hirsch, who is following his much-praised turn in Into the Wild with this would-be summer blockbuster, simply deserved better.

He could’ve been this year’s Shia LaBeouf.

Instead, Shia LaBoeuf will be this year’s Shia LaBeouf when Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull opens later this summer.

But – what do you know – I digress. The truth is Speed Racer is not without its merits. The racing scenes are quite exciting…like, grab-onto-you-armrest exciting.

When the best thing anyone can say about a movie is that its visuals are the good kind of crazy, though (the Wachowskis filmed it in pioneering high-def video, using a layering method to put both the foreground and the background of scenes in focus to have a real-life anime appearance), well…that’s just not worth the price of admission, is it?

For that you can wait for the DVD and watch at home in your big-screen TV.

Tell you what: Take a look-see at the first seven minutes of Speed Racer and then decide whether you want to see the entire thing.

Of the plot I’ll say Hirsch plays the titular character, an aggressive, instinctive and, most of all, fearless driver who decides to take on a big corporation after he discovers it’s fixing races and wants to drive the Racer family out of business.

Matthew Fox (TV’s Lost) and Christina Ricci co-star as Speed’s mysterious ally Racer X, who may or may not be his presumed-dead older brother, and his girlfriend Trixie.

They, too, deserved better.

My Rating **

Photo: Warner Bros.