‘Speed Racer’ an irredeemable bomb

Remove the blanket of pretentious pseudo-philosophy from the “Matrix” trilogy (or, at least, those last two pesky entries) and you’ll find that all that remains is a bunch of action figures being tossed at the wall with the sheer power of machismo. Funny thing how we’ve finally located that hypothetical scenario in the “Ma-trix” filmmakers’ follow-up, “Speed Racer.”

By that same token, however, it’s actually quite surprising that the Wachowski Brothers’ big-screen adaptation of the anime kitsch classic ended up being such a tremendous box office failure. The only way that the film actually distinguishes itself from last year’s mega-blockbuster hit, the execrable “Transformers”—another epileptic muscle-car show disguised as a sickly nostalgia piece for a childhood relic—lies with its inherent corniness and computer-generated zip pans, which come to resemble being physically assaulted by a pastel kaleidoscope. It’s completely incomprehensible and more than likely to induce a migraine—but at least we finally have proof that the Wachowski brothers have been faking it for a while now.

Look to the English version of “Speed Racer’s” theme song to locate the limited plot: “Here he comes, here comes Speed Racer (Emile Hirsch), he’s a demon on wheels / He’s a demon and he’s gonna be chasin’ after someone.” And chase he does, in a series of explosive that are cut so haphazardly that it’s impossible to determine who’s where, who’s winning, or why you should care in the slightest. But the real problem with trying to resuscitate a property like “Speed Racer” is that, unlike “Transformers” (however inexplicable the adulation of that property may be), you’d be pretty hard-pressed to find anyone in this day and age who actually harbors un-ironic admiration for this particular Japanese import with its appalling frame rate—or its English dub, which crams as much exposition as possible into a static shot lasting somewhere around six or seven seconds. You could make a theoretically reasonable argument that the real appeal of a series like “Speed Racer” is the sheer audacity it takes to make an animated series with such excessively limited resources—and even if it wasn’t entirely successful, it still represented a damn-the-torpedoes perspective, an encouragement to realize your vision despite all the odds. Maybe the Wachowskis have been itching to make a “Speed Racer” film for years now, but they certainly won’t be the ones to follow through with that argument, something fully evident by how they surround their incoherent set-pieces with Speed’s little brother Spritle (Paulie Litt) and his pet monkey Chim Chim, who are not around for comic relief so much as they’re there to remind you that the entire effin’ thing is one big joke—on whom, I’m not entirely sure.

By the time that this article hits the newsstands and The River Reporter website, “Speed Racer” will find itself even further near the bottom of the box office tallies and “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” will finally have been released into theaters. Personally, I have my doubts about Indy’s fourth adventure, but even if it turns out to be a bomb, at least it will fulfill a few decades-long curiosities that can finally be put to rest, for better or for worse—and, frankly, I’m a little jealous that you, dear reader, have more than likely already seen it while I, from my vantage point from several days in the past, languish in a pool of my own anticipation. From here, it’s difficult to say where everything will land, but you can’t manufacture the storm of emotions that surrounds “Indy IV”—something that “Speed Racer” attempts to do in a decidedly half-assed fashion, rightfully smacked down by an indifferent moviegoing public.