CINEMA: Speed Racer

You’d expect any movie by the Wachowski (The Matrix) brothers to be full of imagination and creativity and Speed Racer certainly doesn’t disappoint on those two fronts. Shot in a kind of hyper-reality vision, it combines real life action and actors with CGI wizardry to astounding effect.

The world of Speed Racer is full of dayglo colours and stylised houses, cars and planes. This is where the Racer family lives. Dad (John Goodman) is obsessed with car racing and has his own team with his son Rex driving for him. Younger brother Speed (Emile Hirsch) hopes to follow in his older brother’s footsteps and be a top racer too, but when Rex is killed in an “accident” the family is torn apart by grief. When Speed finally does get to race, he’s approached by the multi-billionaire Royalton (a fantastic performance by Roger Allam) to join his high-tech team, but Speed’s loyalties and heart belong to the his family and he decides to take the big guys on at their own game.

There’s a lot of back story to get through and so the film does suffer from an excessive amount of exposition, but when it comes to the racing scenes, it is truly amazing. Cars skid, jump, loopand crash at eyepopping speed – sometimes it’s all so fast it is difficult to keep up with what is going on. However, what keeps everything grounded and very real are the relationships between the characters. There’s dad and understanding mum (Susan Sarandon), the burgeoning love affair between Speed and childhood sweetheart Trixie (Christina Ricci), light relief in the comedy double act of baby brother Spritle (Paulie Litt) and his pet chimp, and the shadowy mentor figure of fellow driver Racer X (Matthew Fox).

Basically, this is a full-on, updated version of The Wacky Races with cartoon villains, dastardly deeds and lots of axle grease, so just sit back and enjoy the ride.      Dee Pilgrim