Speed Racer 2008

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: At its best, it's buoyant pop entertainment focused on three things: speed, racing and retina-splitting oceans of digitally captured color. Read more

Ann Hornaday, Washington Post: A frenetic, densely layered, narratively scrambled blob of moviemaking that will leave viewers alternately baffled and sensorially stunned. Read more

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: It's an eyesore, a shambles, with incoherent action and ear-buckling dialogue. Read more

Andrea Gronvall, Chicago Reader: The Matrix creators Andy and Larry Wachowski barrel through this adaptation of the 60s animated series, hoping perhaps that no one will notice the story is as flat as roadkill. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: This 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 more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: The actors seem lost in a gumball dispenser; the audience, for the most part, might well feel the same way. Read more

Scott Tobias, AV Club: In the early going, the whiz-bang editing and searing primary colors in Speed Racer work like a sugar rush, but the crash from all that overstimulation is enough to reduce grown men into sobbing infants. Read more

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic: Ultimately, Speed Racer comes down to the lesson your parents taught you: Despite the flash, looks aren't everything. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: The movie demands you be a glutton for sensation and then has the nerve to ask why you're not hungrier. Read more

Carina Chocano, Los Angeles Times: The 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. Read more

Amy Biancolli, Houston Chronicle: It gave me a headache, a stomach ache and the less-defined unease that comes from witnessing a major change in the zeitgeist. Because the zeitgeist, judging from this movie, now embraces rattle-headed visual delirium at all costs. Read more

Tom Charity, CNN.com: Twelve-year-old boys should be wowed, but for the rest of us, it will depend on your appetite for eye candy. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: Speed Racer is so hyperfrenetic that, in the end, you wonder if the Wachowskis aren't trying to pull off an elaborate hoax -- a deranged techno fantasia posing as retro-ish family fare. Read more

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post: Sugar, not petrol, is the fuel that comes to mind watching candy-hued, visually hyperactive, narratively sputtering Speed Racer. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: An eye-popping, day-glo videogame that's as emotionally empty as it is visually exhilarating, Speed Racer is style, style, style without substance, but then it moves so fast that many may not care. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: Young boys are the only suitable audience for Speed Racer, and even they might feel an urge to squirm between the videogame-style, whizbang, jellybean-colored, CG-jiggered car races that are the adrenalized heart of this entertainment with no soul. Read more

Laremy Legel, Film.com: Read more

William Goss, Film.com: Amid the overly earnest tone, (almost) squeaky-clean humor and familiar messages about teamwork and integrity is the rare film family that's as strong at the start as they are by the end. Read more

Tom Maurstad, Dallas Morning News: This is a movie that is giddily, gorgeously overwhelming, from the cool slow-motion to the Kubrick cartoons to the wormhole pyrotechnics to the kaleidoscopic bliss. Read more

Rafer Guzman, Newsday: Against all odds it succeeds, making for a spectacular -- and spectacularly strange -- viewing experience. Read more

David Ansen, Newsweek: Speed Racer creates a timeless, visually seductive world suspended somewhere between the pop '60s and the sci-fi future. Its biggest disappointment, strangely enough, is its raison d'etre -- the races themselves. Read more

Anthony Lane, New Yorker: I reckon the M.P.A.A. should use the advent of Speed Racer to revive an old ratings symbol: a big Roman X, meaning 'of no conceivable interest to anyone over the age of ten.' Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: Speed Racer is brilliantly photographed and edited. It's told in a literally visionary style, full of innovation and breathtaking risk. But when it comes to the story, it's running on empty. Read more

Bob Mondello, NPR.org: Read more

Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News: Writer-directors Larry and Andy Wachowski, the creators of the Matrix films, once again invent stunning visual tricks in this adaptation of the late-'60s Japanese anime. Read more

Kyle Smith, New York Post: The movie makes you crave a streamlined story, interesting characters and a joystick. Read more

Rex Reed, New York Observer: I can sit through just about anything, but I draw the line at two hours and 15 minutes of fuchsia vomit. To suffer through this kind of hell, movie critics deserve combat pay. Read more

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: Any film fan will appreciate the Wachowskis' vision of this alternate universe that's every bit as densely textured and as pan-Asian/pan-planetary in its casting as The Matrix. Read more

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: Speed Racer offers a crazy, turbo-charged mix of cartoon kitsch, gamer action, and a wild new way to think of -- and look at -- movies. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: At 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 more

Jim Emerson, Chicago Sun-Times: Speed Racer is a manufactured widget, a packaged commodity that capitalizes on an anthropomorphized cartoon of Capitalist Evil in order to sell itself and its ancillary products. Read more

Stephanie Zacharek, Salon.com: So bereft of intelligence, style and excitement that I can't figure out who in the world it's supposed to appeal to. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: Someday, real artists may come along to use some of the techniques that the Wachowskis are developing. Then things will get interesting. Read more

Dana Stevens, Slate: Shapes hurtle toward you, then recede abruptly, each bearing some fragment of narrative information that has now passed you by forever. Nausea and anxiety begin to wash over you in overlapping waves. Read more

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Read more

Rick Groen, Globe and Mail: Yes, from adults through teens to tykes, there's something here for everyone to dislike -- the whole clan can have fun making fun of this thing. Read more

Philip Marchand, Toronto Star: The movie, unfortunately, doesn't make that leap from sensation to art, but it suggests fascinating possibilities for moviemakers interested in using the latest techniques seriously to explore the world -- the fairyland we have made with our technology. Read more

Richard Corliss, TIME Magazine: More than the story of the Racer family, Speed Racer is the visual autobiography of the Wachowskis and their pit crew of computer-nerd Einsteins, using the tools of their trade to transform the movie medium. Read more

Hank Sartin, Time Out: It's frankly exhausting, and like that bag of Skittles, it won't really satisfy your hunger. But look at all those bright, shiny colors. Read more

Christopher Orr, The New Republic: Speed Racer intends to convey a sense of heedless momentum, but it drags painfully. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: For a movie about velocity, the excitement factor is low and the races feel like a drag. Read more

Todd McCarthy, Variety: Pure cotton candy -- entirely non-nutritious but too sweet and pretty for young people to resist. Read more

J. Hoberman, Village Voice: Ideologically anti-corporate, previous Wachowski productions aspired to be something more than mind-less sensation; Speed Racer is thrilled to be less. It's the delusions minus the grandeur. Read more