I just checked the Rotten Tomato Meter and noticed that Speed Racer, the Wachowski’s adaptation of the classic anime, is running below 40%. Now – honestly- I really don’t give much credence to film criticism. Some of my favorite films (Underworld) were lambasted by critics and just as often I find myself loathing flicks that received great critical acclaim (Crash).

I also kinda knew that Speed Racer would be one of those films that would find its audience outside critical circles, if you catch my drift. Speed Racer is inherently odd, if not downright bizarre. Here are a few contrasting quotes…

David Edelstein from the New York Times says:

What’s fascinating about Speed Racer is that the Wachowskis and Gaeta don’t seem to know the first thing about storyboarding a race. You can forgive a cheap live-action movie for moments of disorientation—the filmmakers are limited by their coverage, by what they actually shot. But how to explain an entirely computerized race in which you can’t tell where anyone is in relation to anyone else? In the high-speed wrecks, no one dies—the drivers are instantly encased in foamy balls and swirl down a drain in the track. Why isn’t this the coolest thing imaginable? Because the crashes are so hard to follow that you barely register what happened. The filmmakers have put all their creative energy into transitions. A radio conversation among drivers is a series of close-ups without cuts: The camera whooshes from the car in back to the car in front to the car in back without a second in between. Amazing! Flashbacks unfold on the screen while the camera is revolving in a 360-degree arc—they finish at the instant we get back to the speaker. Neat! But what does it say when transitions are more thrilling than the scenes on either side of them?

…while Ian Nathan of Empire Magazine writes:

With its ‘60s vibe, gleaming like a fairground, this would surely be the shimmering antithesis to the heavy-duty karma of Neo’s man-machine meltdown. They were making the first living cartoon. And to that end, they have succeeded – the film is triumphantly visual, often thrilling and entirely shallow.

Of course the whole enterprise is predicated on its race sequences, four in which we behold the awe-inspiring clamour of gravity-defying 400mph propulsion – byzantine sugar rushes of light and movement simultaneously realistic and unbelievable. Rather than a film using CG, this is CG as the canvass for a film.

During the talky, thinky, inbetweeny sequences, as Speed and family thrash out their troubles, all the hi-def digital yahoos have been bent to replicating the actual hand-drawn animation of the original series. Actors are posed against a flat background, 2D in fact. There is something of the Baz Luhrmann about all of this – that revelling in your own artifice. A strange sort of endeavour for a movie.

I should point out that there are only 8 reviews posted so far, with many more sure to trickle in when the movie comes out this Friday. I plan on taking my son this weekend, and I’ll be sure to offer our take after I do.