I’ve never been a fan of the original show, hell I’ve never even seen a full episode, but I always dug the iconography of the show and the Mach 5 design has always really appealed to me. My curiosity peaked when the cast was announced and the first trailer was released. You can’t deny that we haven’t really seen anything quite as vibrant and chaotic at the same time.

My first instinct when writing this review, is to defend it. I’m not going to take the stance of the film having a black mark against it just because it didn’t set records and make billions the first night it was released. We get sucked into this system of judging the quality of a film based on how many people go to see it opening weekend. Instead, I’m treating this review the same way I would treat any – I’m not going to defend it, because I don’t feel it needs any defence.

I think Speed Racer is a good movie. It took me a little bit to come to that conclusion, but if you’re like me and have a little kid inside of you (mine has been there since I resorbed my unborn twin) then it isn’t hard at all to see the film for what it truly is. A living, breathing cartoon. It is literally an anime set in real life. It is visually unlike anything we’ve seen before. Imagine a world based on our reality, but with the physics amped up. Now take that world and turn the saturation up one hundred percent. Now turn the brightness and contrast up another hundred percent. Finally, add about a thousand coats of wax to every single surface, and you have a general idea of what you’re in for with this flick. It is in no way realistic, but Speed Racer isn’t trying to fool anyone – it knows exactly what it is, and thus the computer generated imagery works for it. As an audience, we’ve been conditioned to tear apart anything CG that doesn’t look photo real. Speed Racer, on the other hand, is extremely stylized, and it’s a shame that the average mouth-breather in the theater won’t grasp that concept and dump on the film afterwards.

If you haven’t noticed yet, I’m taking the stance of this film’s financial failure to be the fault of the audience. This film was made for one specific demographic – boys aged five to fourteen. Those with ADD are the money zone. This is a kids movie. Not a Night at the Museum family movie. Not a Shrek family movie. This is all for little Timmy who you don’t dare give any sugar to after seven. Though I still really enjoyed the film, had Speed Racer come out sixteen years ago, I shit you not this would have been the greatest thing I had ever seen. This would have changed my life. Perhaps this reflects on the youth of today and how much they’ve changed since I was a tyke, or maybe Speed Racer is just sixteen years to late to make it’s mark.

Though I rave about the film and defend it from the grasp of the inevitable free-with-purchase-of-blu-ray curse, the film does have faults. Almost all of the characters feel completely static with little development. There is no growth at all, especially with Speed, the main character. Speed wants to race! Speed competes in the race! The race is over! Still the same Speed! Getting back to my point about it being a kids movie though, the action of the races and simplicity of the characters is fine for what it is. The mysterious Racer X is pretty bad ass in that Batman kind of way, and I can see Spritle and Chim-Chim getting some big laughs from the kids. John Goodman is great as usual, playing Speed Racer’s dad, Pops Racer, and I found the character of Taijo Togokahn, Speed’s adversary turned partner, to be quite interesting and I would’ve liked to see more. Same goes for Racer X, tenfold.

The film kind of faltered in the bad-guy department. I felt that there was no real villain in the film in the capacity of the race sequences. We are shown Snake Oiler as the unbeatable-cum-unscrupulous racer, but he comes off more as a dumb henchman obstacle than a veritable challenge for Speed. This takes away from Royalton’s (the corrupt main villain) device just a tad.

With these minor setbacks said, the film’s victory is it’s action scenes, which are comprised 90% of racing. These are some intense car races. It’s like a real-life hotwheels course, but the cars are allowed to do back flips and have rocket launchers and giant saw blades. The physics of the course and driving styles are closer to pinball than Nascar really, with the Mach 6 doing complete 360 degree spins around almost vertical turns. There are two major races in the film and each one is at least a solid ten minutes long, and yet they don’t become long in the tooth and are downright fun to watch.

Is Speed Racer for you? Unless you are really in tune with your kid side, then don’t bother. Unless you can not take yourself so seriously, then forget it. Unless you like having a bunch of fun, leave it be. Unless you enjoy seeing unique, vibrant, colorful, intense, chaotic and campy excitement.. well you get my point.