racing OUT.

Speed Racer is a live action movie trying to pass itself off as an anime.

Granted, that the basis for the movie IS a 60's anime. But couldn't the Wachowski Brothers handled it a lot more along the lines of say, The Matrix? (They used 'the makers of The Matrix Trilogy' as a marketing tool, anyway. They could've at least lived up to it.)

Not to say that Speed Racer is a bad watch, but it wasn't awfully good either. If you go in there expecting to be wowed by effects, mise-en-scene, or God forbid adrenalin-pumping car chases, then you're pretty much in for disappointment.

If, however, you just want to see real people (like Rain *squee*) roleplaying anime characters, then you're pretty much set.

Unfortunately, I went in there with the first mindset, and so the rest is history.

...

Well, okay. A bit more detail then.

Production design was a cross between Dr. Seuss' The Grinch and Spy Kids in 3D. Colors were exaggerated to the point that you'd think pastels were banned in their world, and primary colors were oh-so-in. The houses in the neighborhood looked like cutouts, and the cars looked cartoony when taken out of the race circuits and into the streets. The Royalton lab looked painstakingly like it was a wing in Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory.

90% of it was shot in chroma. Chroma keying was nothing out of the ordinary for the Wachowskis - clean, fuzz-free an' all that. The chroma shots had the Wachowski stamp on it; one of the few that actually had it. Scenes in montages (which composed like, 50% of the movie) weaved into each other beautifully. The rate of change in scenes per frame sometimes got a tad overwhelming, but it was still a pretty good attempt at something cool and innovative. (I haven't seen anything like it before.)

The race circuit scenes was also handled well enough, though it was nothing extraordinary. Having been shot on chroma, and looking obviously CG'd, there wasn't much to be exhilirated from.

Gotta give them credit for trying to stay loyal to the genre of anime though.

I do wish they took a page out of Quentin Tarantino's book and transmuted the anime version the way Kill Bill was done. Or a page out of their own, and created something close to their crowning glory, The Matrix. (Oh, wait. There *was* a Matrix moment there - in one of the fight scenes where everyone was frozen in the air for a couple of beats while the camera dollied around them. Hello, bullet speed. I wish it wasn't just *that* that they took from earlier work.) Or, at least had the race circuit scenes similar (in concept) to the way the Initial D live action was done.

Then again, this is a PG movie. It's supposed to be for kids. (Christina Ricci, poster girl of Eternal Childism, is there, for crying out loud.) Maybe the only reason why I'm not awed by it is because *I'm* not part of their target audience.

(Actually, the movie's target audience is also a bit confusing. Sure, it's for kids. Sure, it has morals. But Christina Ricci in plunging necklines and short leather skirts, getting all sexually wound up, and a kid upping his middle finger at a grown adult? Mixed signals, baby.)

Hmmm. Yeah.

I just hope Dragon Ball's live action (with Buffy's Spike as Piccolo?!) turns out better.