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Well, Ali, Sara, and I went and watched this. My first thoughts before I saw the movie was, I hope the Wachowsky(sp) Bros don't ruin this movie for me because growing up I loved the Speed Racer anime. The beginning was interesting, showing you Speed as a young boy and how he looked up to his brother Rex, basically the backstory from the cartoon.
Then it got to the racing part of the movie... I was upset mainly because from what I remember of the cartoon it was all the cross country death races. The racing in the movie was circuit racing like Nascar crap. Actually it was like Speed Racer mixed with Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift and a crap load of PCP. The first hour or so had none of the gadgets that I thought were cool as a kid. They didn't bring them in to play until he did a cross country race near the end of the movie and that race wasn't even that long.
The story line of "We won't race for a company, you're the devil." was way overplayed in this film as well. John Goodman, bless his heart, did a good job as Pop but his dialog was pretty pathetic too.
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One part that pissed me off is that they tried to do away with the 'Racer X is really Rex Racer' story plot. Speed asked Racer X to take off his mask and when he did it was totally a different actor than Rex's. He said that he was sorry for what happened to his brother, but he wasn't him. Then at the very end of the film they showed like 15 seconds of Rex getting plastic surgery to change his facial identity. WTF? and that anyone who saw his face would be enemies of his enemies. Lame.
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Other parts of this film reminded me of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in the sense that it was too bright, too kiddy, and the CGI was too fake. The kid and the monkey were way too annoying. There was one part where 3 ninjas trying to assassinate Speed, Racer X, and their team racer Taejo. Well, Racer X was doing his kung fu thing, I don't what Taejo was doing, and Speed's brother and the monkey were beating up the ninja that was sent for Speed... it was pathetic. Then in came Pops, and it zoomed in on his College Wrestling Championship ring and he choke slammed the ninja on a room service cart and kicked it and the ninja flew out the window. Mom Racer(Susan Sarandan) said, "Was that a ninja?" and Pops said, "It's crazy what passes for a ninja these days, that was more like a nonja." then they all busted up laughing. I was getting even more pissed at the film.
All in all I'd give it a 1.5 VROOM!s out 5. Mainly because of John Goodman being in it and I loved him in the Big Lebowski.
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