4/29/2023 0 Comments Speed racer 2008“The overuse of this trick evokes the following responses,” Stevens wrote. The transitional wipes were a particularly sore point for Stevens, and in her defense, the film does go back to them often. In her review for Slate, Dana Stevens declared the film to be a “high-tech failure.” Stevens wasn’t a fan of the film’s nonlinear storytelling and editing choices. “It’s a sugar cereal served for six meals straight. Robert Davis of Paste Magazine joined in, saying the film was targeting a younger audience but felt the long run-time would be a hindrance, writing that its “slow middle may lose the seven-year-olds that it clearly covets.” A short version of the film “might have been a retro-futuristic hoot, but at 129 it requires five times too much hooting,” Davis wrote. The visuals, however, weren’t enough in Charity’s eyes to make up for the film’s lack of laughs and suspense and characters that are “as synthetic as everything else in this virtual entertainment.” “Twelve-year-old boys should be wowed,” Charity wrote, “but for the rest of us, it will depend on your appetite for eye candy.” Charity was impressed by the film’s “visual panache,” crediting the Wachowskis for translating the “splashy, wide-eyed innocence of the anime universe” to the big screen. Much like Bradshaw, CNN’s Tom Charity felt the film would only appeal to a younger audience. The film’s unique visuals didn’t work for Bradshaw, who compared them to “an old-fashioned television with the contrast dial turned up too high.” Bradshaw did credit the film for being “occasionally intriguing in an exotic and bizarre way,” but that wasn’t enough to overcome the “deafeningly loud and stroboscopically flashy” aspects. “You have to be twelve to like it,” Peter Bradshaw wrote in his review for The Guardian. ![]() Michael Compton of the Bowling Green Daily News described the film as “an overbearing mix of candy-coated visuals and an incoherent plot.” It’s the type of film, Compton wrote, “that makes you question the sanity of the people involved.” Despite a capable cast, Compton blamed the film’s screenplay for trying too hard “to play to the five-and-under crowd.” And apparently, that didn’t work because Compton’s son was disinterested in seeing the film, saying, “ Speed Racer stinks.” ![]() ![]() Rather than impressed by the Wachowskis’ efforts to expand the boundaries of cinema, many critics wrote it off as merely a kids movie, too reliant on flashy effects and lacking any real substance. This peculiar style caught critics of the day off guard, leaving them turned off by the film’s assault on the senses. To do so the directors ditched the rather bland and muted color palette of the original series and replaced it with a world of loud, lucid colors all strung together by a rapid succession of quick edits. How did critics feel about it at the time, and do we see it differently now? In this entry, Chris Coffel explores the original critical reception of the Wachowskis’ Speed Racer.įive years after wrapping up their groundbreaking Matrix trilogy, Lana Wachowski and Lilly Wachowski traded in their sunglasses and trench coats for fast cars and driving scarves as they sped to the raceway to adapt the popular 1960s anime series Speed Racer.Īrmed with a budget of $120 million, the directors set out to do something ambitious: take a story about a young race car driver, named Speed Racer (Emile Hirsch), with aspirations of becoming the best driver in the world, and make it something uniquely their own. They Said What?! is a biweekly column in which we explore the highs and lows of film criticism through history.
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