I’m with you. I just took my 6 and 2 year old sons to see it and we were ALL glued to the screen. I too loved the cartoon as a boy, and while the movie is quite faithful to the cartoon with nice retro touches, the movie itself, particularly the racing sequences, is visually sparkling. I mean really, REALLY stunning. What the original cartoon lacked in animation in the 1970’s is more than made up for by this flick. If you have a small boy, take him to see it. It’s utterly irresistable.
They should have a warning for epileptics or something!
gaffa, you’re wrong. You seem to be making the very foolish assumption that the Wright Brothers never did anything beyond their first flight. They set records for years, eventually making a plane which could do over 60 miles of flight, which was pretty good considering before them no one had done 60 feet. The fact that they did not invent ailerons hardly means they were meaningless.
Edit: And they developed the principles of aerodynamic flight.
Seems like a reason not to see it to me! I loathed the cartoon. (Not saying you shouldn’t have enjoyed the movie–you said you liked the cartoon, so that’s cool. This isn’t any sort of commentary on your enjoyment, simply an affirmation of my previous assumption that I probably wouldn’t like the movie.)
I liked the cartoon when I was seven, in the 1970’s. I wouldn’t like it today if I were seven against the current crop of technologically superior cartoons. I can’t bear to watch the cartoon much at the age of 38 and thought the movie was incredible, even if just from an eye-candy standpoint. My six year old agrees, and I’ve tried to get him into the original cartoon, but he isn’t biting.
The lowest-tech cartoon that he (and I )likes is Scooby Doo.
Exactly. I recently watched some of the original episodes on DVD and thought they didn’t hold up at all. The movie captured my memories of the cartoon in an updated way and made me remember why I loved the series so much. It’s not often you can get a journey back in time like that.
I’d just like to add that *Last Action Hero * was a snide, unpleasant, unfunny, umimaginative movie, starring a man who simply cannot do comedy and a truly awful child actor (Charles Dance was OK, though).
And yeah, I “got” it. What’s not to get? It’s Post-Modernism 101.
I grew up in the 80s and used to watch Speed Racer on cable. Although i never understood the plot, it never kept me away from the tv at 6:30pm. I saw it Friday evening in a mostly empty theatre. Me and lots of others thoroughly enjoyed it. The movie really brought the cartoon to life.
But i can definitely see that anyone who didn’t watch the cartoon is going into the theatre and expecting it to be crap, thinking it is crap the whole time, and denounce it even more after they see it. It’s pretty lame that people make up their minds based on the opinions of so many others.
Wow, I would say the opposite to every one of those. I thought it was clever, very funny and lots of fun. As a movie, better than Speed Racer, but nowhere near as pretty and dazzling.
About Speed Racer…
Even though I was never a 5-7 year old boy who played with Hot Wheels (and never watched the cartoon) I’d also say that AICN guy got it right. It’s total eye candy. Perhaps it’s just a nutritious and long-lasting as candy (that is, not at all and not for very long) but it tasted fine to me while it lasted. Most of all, I’m glad I didn’t wait to see it on DVD. It’s a theater experience, kinda like Transformers. Neither are great movies, but both are so spectacular-looking (SR X1000) that if they’re going to be seen, they should be seen on the big screen.
I totally understand why the critics didn’t like it, and can’t really blame them, but I’m glad I didn’t pay attention to them and saw it anyway. Well, I would have gone even if I had paid attention to them. Since The (original) Matrix is one of my all-time favorite films (I was obsessed by it and saw it in the theater over 30 times) there’s no way I would have missed seeing any film by those two. If The Matrix is a 10 (to me, on my personal scale) and Bound is a 9 and the Matrix sequels are a 7, Speed Racer would be a 4-5, but I’m STILL glad I saw it in the theater.
I generally like critics. They’ve steered me toward good-to-great movies many many many many many times over the years, but there are some times, especially with Ebert (who I still can’t believe disliked Raising Arizona), where I just have to ignore/disregard them and their opinions. Sometimes I find out they’re right, sometimes I find out they’re wrong (to me). Some of my favorite films were lambasted by critics, such as Return To Oz, which got scathing reviews. IMO, Return to Oz is truly a truly good movie. Speed Racer isn’t, but I’m STILL glad I saw it in the theater, and want to see it again in either digital or IMAX.
They refused to compete in open competitions with people they considered “patent infringers” - and they considered anyone who built an airplane and was not paying them for their patents, even those who did not use any of the Wrights inventions - an infringer. I’m away from my library and will be for a few weeks, but when I get back I’ll review my books on the subject and start a GD thread. It should be as lively as a Edison vs. Tesla debate.
The Wrights were pioneers in one particular; they caused the first airplane passenger fatality, Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge.
It’s more that that, and if you’d seen it, you wouldn’t say that.
and if you HAVE seen it and still deem it so, then I have to say you’re a stodgy old butt that seeks nothing but dialogue from your movies. That’s fine.
THIS movie is an EXPERIENCE like a ride at Six Flags…love it or hate it
My problem with the cartoon was that I couldn’t get past the voiceover actors. They read the script like it was their first run-through and their only direction was “read these words in this order as fast as possible.” There was never even natural inflection to indicate the type of sentence (declaration? question? exclamation?) that it was. Just a sort of nonstop diarrhea of words with no cadence or meaning. It infuriated me even as a child to the point where I couldn’t even try to pay attention to the plot.
In any event, “Speed Racer” ISN’T universally panned; the reviews aren’t good, but it’s getting at least a few props. Its Tomatometer rating was 32 as of last night, which is terrible, but certainly not even in the bottom 250 Tomato-rated films. Compare it to, say, “Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever.”
The movie really brought the cartoon to life.