Wachowski brothers create a need to see ‘Speed Racer’

By Bob Strauss

- Los Angeles Daily News

“Speed Racer” is a fanboy-friendly story about a car-crazy family in an automotively obsessed parallel world. But it’s also the trippiest movie since “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

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Emile Hirsch, center, as Speed Racer in the Mach 5 competes in a dangerous race in the action adventure “Speed Racer.”

This latest explosion of color and motion from Andy and Larry Wachowski, who made “The Matrix” trilogy, is another visual groundbreaker. Multiple levels of computer images are layered with previously unseen velocity and graphic ingenuity.

Cars careen, fly and fight each other in endless impossible ways, while intensely detailed backgrounds change constantly and whole different foreground perspectives slide smoothly by as if on holiday from another dimension. The innovation becomes gratuitous after a while, but it never stops short of digital design at its state-of-the-art best. And that goes double in the ear-splitting soundtrack department.

What’s that you say? You want a story to go with all the kinetic wonderment? There is one here, but if that really matters to you, you might be better off playing the new edition of “Grand Theft Auto.”

Gifted young driver Speed Racer (“Into the Wild’s” Emile Hirsch) lives in primary-colored suburbia with his car-builder pop Pops (John Goodman), his very momlike Mom (Susan Sarandon), his troublemaking little brother Spritle (Paulie Litt) and the family chimp. His girlfriend Trixie (Christina Ricci, as perfectly designed as any performance car) flies her own helicopter. The family lost its oldest son in a crash some years ago. A mostly benevolent mystery driver, Racer X (“Lost’s” Matthew Fox), hangs around.

A complicated back story outlines corruption in the racing world, much of which is now spearheaded by the gargantuan Royalton Industries, whose evil owner (Roger Allam) manipulates from a very elaborate, futuristic headquarters in a post-space-age city that appears inspired by “The Jetsons.” Suffice it to say that Speed is pure and won’t let Royalton co-opt him. The corporation hires a wide array of baddies — ninjas, even — to take down the Racers, both on and off the track.

Like everything else about “Speed Racer,” its anti-capitalist theme goes as over the top as it possibly can, which is ridiculous but kind of interesting in a movie that’s aimed at children, just as its ’60s TV anime series was. Likewise, conversations about family and ethics and such have a flat but deeply urgent quality to them, and can be inadvertently funny for anybody older than 9. Just considering them clunky is all right, too.

This stuff is only there to fill time between the races, though, each of which has a different style. One’s all strobe-lit pinball bumper cars, another the ultimate video-game demo derby, and a road rally that runs from barren desert to snowy mountain tops does everything in its computerized power to make “The Road Warrior” chase look realistic. It’s all pretty dazzling. It can certainly wear you out, but take the kids anyway. They’ll probably dig it.

"Speed Racer" is rated PG and is showing at College 9, Premiere and Roxy.