Speed Racer (2008) Reviews
Critic & User Reviews
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Critic Reviews
Aimed squarely at family audiences, the Wachowski Brothers' return behind the camera for the first time since the "Matrix" trilogy is a blur of video action painting and very loud sounds notable solely for its technical wizardry. In every other respect, it's pure cotton candy -- entirely non-nutritious but too sweet and pretty for young people to resist.
Read the full reviewUnlike a Pixar cartoon that embraces as wide an audience as possible, Speed Racer proudly denies entry into its ultra-bright world to all but gamers, fanboys and anime enthusiasts. Story and character are tossed aside to focus obsessively on PG-rated action and milk-guzzling heroes.
Read the full reviewThe movie demands you be a glutton for sensation and then has the nerve to ask why you're not hungrier.
Read the full reviewBorderline-experimental in the way it challenges the limits of perception. It's forward-thinking, visionary, and much of the time unwatchable.
Read the full reviewIf this action extravaganza represents the future of movies, it's going to be a sad, dead and awful future.
Read the full reviewThere is one high note. You can approach Speed Racer as the trippiest stonerfest since Stanley Kubrick took his space odyssey.
Read the full reviewAt an exceedingly long 135 minutes, the film needs more than what might result from the explosion of a Crayola factory, and Speed Racer has nothing extra to offer - no heart, no excitement, no moments to cherish.
Read the full reviewYoung boys are the only suitable audience for Speed Racer, the elaborate live-action adaptation written and directed by "Matrix" creators Larry and Andy Wachowski. And even they might feel an urge to squirm.
Read the full reviewYes, it's a candy-colored Day-Glo world, but there's a liveliness missing from this lead-footed Speed Racer.
Read the full reviewThis movie sets out to honor and refresh a youthful enthusiasm from the past and winds up smothering the fun in self-conscious grandiosity.
Read the full reviewThe state of mind brought on by Speed Racer the movie is more akin to that phenomenon by which young infants, exposed to more stimuli than their systems are equipped to handle, will simply shut down.
Read the full reviewChances are, after they've passed the two-hour mark, viewers will share the same collective, if unspoken, wish: Go, Speed Racer. Go.
Read the full reviewThe fakeness of it all overwhelms, dampening any real excitement. It's hard to care about characters so stiff and one-dimensional they out-cartoon the cartoon originals, and it's hard to watch them bop around like avatars in a flat, airless, digital world.
Read the full reviewThis toxic admixture of computer-generated frenzy and live-action torpor succeeds in being, almost simultaneously, genuinely painful -- the esthetic equivalent of needles in eyeballs -- and weirdly benumbing, like eye candy laced with lidocaine.
Read the full reviewReview excerpts provided by Metacritic.com.
The Metascore® designation for this movie is 37
User Reviews
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aRE YOU PEOPLE CRAZY THAT MOVIE ROCKED!!!!!
"IT WAS ACTION PACKED AND FILLED WITH LOTS OF LAUGHS! NOW I KNOW ALL YOUR KIDS LOVED THE LITTLE BOY AND MONKEY IN THE MOVIE. ASK THEM!!I CRYED AND LAUGHED AND EVERY TIME HE WAS DRIVING, I FELT LIKE JUMPING OUT OF MY SEAT SAYING "GO SPEED RACER GO!!!!!" PLUS I DON'T REMEMBER THEM SAYING A LOT OF CUSE WORDS YOU PEOPLE ARE CRAZY SAYING THAT IT IS NOT FOR KIDS. EVEN IF IT WAS PG-13 I WOULD STILL TAKE MY KIDS."
do not read
"PLEASE DONT READ THIS!!! U WILL GET KISSED AT THE NEAREST POSSIBLE FRIDAY BY THE LOVE OF UR LIFE HOWEVER IF U DONT PPOST THIS ON AT LEAST THREE VIDEOS U WILL DIE IN 2 DAYS NOW THAT UV STARTED READIN DONT SPOT NOW. THIS IS SO SCARY SEND THIS TO AT LEAST 5 VIDEOS IN143 MINUTES AND UR CRUSHES NAMES WILL APPEAR ON THE SCREEN IN BIG LETTERS THIS IS SO SCARY CAUSE IT ACTUALLY WORKS"
AMAZING MOVIE
"this movie was awesome from beginning to end, hands down!"
First Of All.....
"Dont get at ma boo Emile Hirsch-he was hella sexy as Speed. Second of all, yall need to shut da f*** up about the whole cussin thing. Sure you may have kids, but what kid dont you know by now that doesnt have some kind of innapropriate behavior. The movie is not encouraging them to swear and fight, the movie was encouraging teamwork. Evidently you need to work on your parenting skills if you're nervous about taking your 8 year old to see it. I mean , my god... thats the real world, you cant shield them from stuff like that forever... i wanna be sure they probably hear far more worst s*** on the playground. Dont get mad at da movie, or da wachowski bros. they makin a movie for your entertainment- so f***** grow up!!!oh yeah........GO eMILe Baby GO!!!!!!!"
Great fun!
"I almost didn't go to see this based on all the bad reviews...but WOW! I'm glad I did. As a great fan when I was a kid, I really appreciated how much this film honored the original series. It was great to see all the characters back and the casting and dialogue was spot on. I took 7 year old kids and we all were riveted to the screen during all the race scenes. It was a little long--I thought there would be two big races rather than three--but held the kids attention throughout.As for the appropriateness, I didn't see much of anything that would give me pause as a mom except the brief flash of a middle finger (to which I promptly told my kids that they were never ever to use that gesture because it was really rude) but even that was flashed so quickly that I don't even think that they really caught on to which finger was used. Unless i was in the bathroom during any "violent" scenes, I didn't see anything other than slapstick-type fights. The movie is a cartoon after all. It IS over the top, cartoonish, hyper and lots of all that--but so was the original series.There are some great values--loyalty, teamwork, persistence, doing what's right not the most lucrative, and lots of love and unity within the Racer family. Family, love, loyalty, and doing the right thing wins over cheating, dishonesty, corruption and greed. What's to argue with that???I'm a 40something mom of little kids and I loved it. If you go expecting a wild ride, videogame/cartoon angles and thrills, you won't be disappointed."
Repeat: Not for kids!
"PG rating? SPOILERS AHEAD: I took my two granddaughters, ages 3 and 7, to see this film, and I'm sorry I did. A scene with a savage, bloody beating ends with a young driver about to be placed in a tank filled with voracious piranha fish. Then, when one of the bad guys is forced to block a bullet hole in the aquarium with his finger and the piranha gobble his finger, he screams and the water in the tank turns red, I walked out with my granddaughters and received free replacement tickets from the manager. I'll review films a little more carefully from now on before taking impressionable young children to see PG-rated so-called kid's movies."
This is NOT for kids.
"I took my 2 kids, 11 yo girl and 7 yo boy. The description said "Family Friendly" but this movie was NOT.The words "a*s" and "h*ll" were used more than once, there was a very violent scene where a man was beaten until he was bloody and another man had his finger eaten by piranah. When a character in the movie flipped off another, we walked out. I fully expected the movie to get better and it did NOT. I don't ever want to have to apologize to my kids again for taking them to the movies. NOT FOR KIDS."
Don't let short sighted critics kill a fun movie!
"I went to see Speed Racer with a group ranging in age from 9 to 43, and we all had a great time with the tongue-in-cheek action this flick takes directly out of its anime predecessor. Plenty of laughs, don't let anybody tell you that this movie is "nothing like the cartoon", as one local critic put it. Almost every character in the movie can be traced back to the '60's counterpart, and the live actors in their roles are savvy enough to hit the personalities dead on their marks. None of this merits an Oscar, nor does any other part of the movie (except perhaps costumes). In fact, all the glitz and flash of the computer-generated surroundings actually attracts attention away from a decent story that is more character-driven than most anime, even the original. I believe this over-the-top animation around our motion-captured heroes fuels critics' revulsion. In short, this is the perfect movie to take the whole family out to start the summer blockbuster season, perhaps just the matinee. (4 of 5 stars)"
HORRIBLE!!! SHOULD BE PG-13!!!!!!
"I have 3 boys- 2 8 yr. olds and a 5 yr. old who have been waiting for this movie....we got up and left after 70 minutes because the word a** was used 4 times, damn and hell were used and violence was physical and semi bloody and scary, and the young boy in the film flipped the bird to someone!!!! I was appalled- and furious!!! They have marketed this film to YOUNG kids all this time and there was NO reason for these scenes in the movie. A PG rating is simply inappropriate for this film....it's sad what is happening to our society...trying to raise good kids with good manners is next to impossible! Don't take kids at least under 10!"
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