Is Speed Racer Kubrick's 2001 for kids?
To call its reception 'lukewarm' is an understatement, and it's easy to see why. It's too child-friendly for adults -the cute-kid-and-monkey comic relief, straight from the cartoon, will set many eyes rolling - but it's also too long and convoluted for kids. It's hubris worthy of Greek myth to make a film entirely about velocity run for a leisurely, sometimes leaden, two hours or more.
These real, glaring problems? They don't matter. Behind Speed Racer's flat dialogue and clumsy storytelling, there's more life, more joy, more hypodermic-to-the-eye full-tilt kapow than in a half-dozen other blockbusters slapped together.
The Wachowski Brothers gave us bullet-time and flappy black coats, but now they shift gears into bright colours and bizarre designs. Simple cuts are replaced by kaleidoscopic whip-pans. Kinetic energy turns falling snow into anime speed-lines. It's more than just eye-candy. In the final moments, Speed Racer's visuals fall apart into gorgeous, candified abstractions.
See it if you're curious how far and fast the Wachowskis will go.
Format: Cinema
Genre: Fantasy
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ThreeThousand is a subcultural guide to Melbourne, published daily and fired by email weekly. It is compiled by an amorphous gaggle of Melbourne writers, stylists, designers and photographers who all like huddling under that big umbrella we like to call creativity. Without editorial independence ThreeThousand has nothing. All editorial you read is featured because it's worth it - not because it's paid for.