Speed Racer: The Movie

[mabudon]

HOLY FUCK DUDE man alive I am afraid the film WILL actually injure me on some respect, thans for the double-post 'Nark

[anarky]

The awesomeness of THIS cannot be understated. Especially check out "other views" on the last set.

[mabudon]

well, it's almost time...
Them Lego sets are pretty cool- my fave "easter egg" in the lot was the fact that the Mammoth Car has that ridiculous "command centre" in it, complete with the classic "intellectual/upper class bad guy" artworks AND a fuckin giant AQUARIUM, something you don't usualy see in race cars (or race GIGANTIC fucking transport truck with missile systems on 'em for that matter)

I am literally shaking I am so excited- that first few minutes is fuckin amazing- when the car literally SAYS "speeeeed" whilst Rex is teaching him how to drive the mach 4, that bit at the end when Sparky says "you know who you're racing against" then cut to Speed chasing the phantom of the mach 4 , the bit where young Speed is doing that test (me and my buddy watched it together and both of us said simultaneously "JELLY BEANS?!?!? Fuck!!" ) and the "question" turns into "Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah All Racers to your cars please.. All Racers to your cars"

fuck man if that first bit is ANY indication of what we're gonna get I swear I will fuckin pass out at the halfway point

[mabudong]

Code: Select all

Run Diagnostic:

Main Body:  Excited
Heart Rate:  Elevated
Phase:  Full Mast

Elf Status:  Out of Commission

Compiling data...done
Determining necessary procedures...done

Recommended action:  Hand Job

Inserting Humor...

Misuse quote subroutine:  I'm excited! I'll wager Newsbot is too!!

[mabudon]

Okay we just got back- detailed review in the morning but that fuckin film was MESSED up

Nark, there IS something in it that could be considered a spoiler, seriously you will NOT believe it, avoid everything that's not guaranteed spolier-free (which I promise my review will be)

it was a pure fuckin blast tho, really excellent

[mabudon]

Okay, double post blow me


Right- well, where to start- the film was intense- the action was really really nutty. Despite criticism posted herein earlier, it's both easy to follow AND track-specific

The Mammoth car is NOT in a race but it does tangle with Rex in the Shooting Star for a good few minutes- the introduction of the MC is especially cool, but I won't say more than that

The Mach 6 is not in the whole thing, as something unfortunate happens to it in the second race (and the second race is presented REALLY weird, it's obviously been intentionally positioned such that while you're watching it, you don't know if it's a future hypothetical, a flashback or happening while yer watching it- that isn't cleared up for a few minutes just to fuck with you), this leaves the way for the Mach 5 to compete in the Casa Cristo 5000 which is the most "show accurate" race of the film and also by far the longest, it was 20 minutes at least but likely longer

The final race is fucking madness, featuring the (sadly really underutilized as far as what happened with it in the original cartoon) GRX on the super techno track. The last minute or so of the race is SO heavy with effects and psychedelic nuttiness that I was literally floored

The visuals in the film are overall really slick, a LOT of choices as to how to depict stuff were brilliant and sadly, largely inexplicable

The characters are all handled extremely well, Trixie kick serious ass (even young Trixie kicks ass) to the extent that she actually drives for one leg of a race to replace a driver who was temporarily incapacitated by a paralizing agent given him by a ninja and keeps up completely with Speed and Co.

Speed himself IS Speed Racer- he's SO wholesome, no false pride, just the classic Speed Determination. Only minutes into the film the character is fully realized when Speed competes against the phantom of the Mach 4, he is on pace to beat the standing record set by Rex when he throttles down at the last second to let the record stand, it made me a little teary almost it's SO well handled

Racer X is a bad-ass and with the wacky colours in every shot, his stark black-ness makes him look TOTALLy out of place and awkward yet deadly all at once, really worked on the "mysterious" and yet there's a point in the film where he undergoes a radical change (NOT for any reason you might expect, IIRC there IS no reason, it just kinda happens and it's pretty obvious something has changed, serious) and loses much of the "dour-ness" that makes up pretty much his whole character for the first bit of the film


OH when the refurbishing of the Mach 5 is completed (with the "added features) the actual bit from the cartoon (with new animation natch, nice 3-d vector-type stuff) is shown, with the steering wheel and all the buttons and what they do (this mach 5 DOES have the homing robot that looks like the pigeon even, fuckin sweet)

Uhh dunno what else to say really, it was huge fun and didn't seem hardly over 90 minutes long. The copious use of flashbacks to explain whatever element needed explaining at the time was nice- it didn't treat the viewer as stupid by having each one begin with a blurry fade out on someone contemplating, just BAM this apparently happened 10 years ago, then bam right back into the present with no real transitions (although to be fair there's pretty much nutty transitions between almost every single shot)



And Anarky, seriously avoid ALL spoilers, cos when you see how the Racer X plotline works out you're gonna shit, it was the biggest curveball I think I've ever seen- even the fuckin trailers play a role in setting "IT" up, dude it was fuckin awesome

[anarky]

Man, now with you teasing some major curveball in the Racer X plot, it's almost worse than you telling me. Now I'm going to not be able to help trying to figure it out.

Ghost? Impostor? Figment of Speed's imagination? Flashback? Skrull?

Fuck you, mabs! Speed will never find my boot in your ass, eh, Chim Chim?



I'm not really pissed, but, damn, this is going to be bugging me for six more days!

[mabudon]

Dude, you will never figure it out and even if you did I wouldn't confirm or deny it, but trust me the payoff will be fuckin intense is all's I'm gonna say, it involved a complete blowing of my fuckin mind TWICE

You will be WELL rewarded by this film if you go in spoiler free, trust me, the shit that goes down will literally blow yer mind bro serious...


And I meant to throw you into a fit by actually tossin that out

[mabudon]

Oh and I forgot to address the issue of the car acrobatic team- they are represented like they are in a few eps of the show by a selected small group of drivers, and in the Casa Cristo 5000 there's a few specially recruited mercenary reams of 3 drivers each- a bunch of Barbi-chicks, a bunch of Gi Joe dudes and a bunch of Vikings (each team is shown accepting their payoff- the vikings are hilarious, they're all covered in food and crap and their "booty" is a big box of fine furs which they promptly start using to wipe their faces with while grunting, it's awesome)

I expect if there's a sequel the full team will be involved, I would KILL to see them doing the "stack" manouver where they all pile on top of one another then take off starting with the cars in the middle of the pile

The Casa Cristo is the only race with hard-core weapons use too- the racers wait til they're in areas where there's no coverage by officials then for a few minutes of unsupervised race-time shit goes NUTS- wait'll you SEE some of the weapons used by the various bad guys- Snake Oiler has a particularly awesome one and another driver I don't ercall has a unique "Bio Weapon" of sorts, you'll know it when ya see it I guar-ron-tee

[RoIIo Tomassi]

That fucking ROCKED!

Definitely the funnest movie of the year so far, and I thought Iron Man would be impossible to top!

Fuuuck, we can't get into actual discussions until more people have seen it? I'm raging to talk about how fucking fun this was.

I love how the FIRST race could be the climax to any other movie. It was ten minutes in and I was already on the edge of my seat and getting all emotional as Speed "raced" his brother.

The editing of the narrative, seamlessly transitioning between the past and present in a fluid way, all the while your senses being gonzo'd like your eyes eating whole roll of Starburst and a bag of Skittles all at once.

Everybody's performances were dead on. Pops WAS Pops. Spritle WAS Spritle. Racer WAS Racer X.

The small moments were killer. Spritle giving the badguy the finger. ChimChim flinging "chocolate".

My favorite part was during the cross country race, instead of cutting back and forth to the drivers, they were smash zooming from one car to the other, back and farth, back and forth as Speed, X, and Trixie all banter. I was jumping up and down in my seat at the brilliance of that.

I was humming the theme for the rest of the day.

So much fun. It's sad that it is tanking at the Box Office and that means no sequel. But I am definitely going again. WORD OF MOUTH PEOPLE. TELL YOUR FRIENDS! HAVE THEIR FREINDS TELL THEIR FRIENDS!! GO SEE SPEED RACER.

[mabudon]

It is a sad testament to how joyless people have become that this film is doing poorly

the fuckin movie was brilliant and it's no exaggeration to say that a new kind of movie was invented with this sucker.
Can't wait for Nark to see this then we CAN discuss it, the amount of stuff one could kinda ruin simply by mentioning it is ridiculous

[RoIIo Tomassi]

Agreed. One should experience it in as pristine condition as possible.

[vynsane]

i'll be going tonight... rock!

[mabudon]

awesome, then that's one more of us who has to figure out how to keep quiet til Nark catches up dammit, glad I'm not the only one bursting at the seams here, you will fuckin LOVE it vynsunt, there is NO way you'll miss the fun- again, sit as far back as you can manage, we were in the middle and I wished we'd been a few more rows back just to catch everything

[anarky]

Sorry, guys. The theater's half an hour away. We have to plan for it, and I only just finally convinced Mrs A to watch it.

I think it's not doing so well because all the advance info was reviews by pros who need to get the sticks out of their asses. Word of mouth will definitely help this one. I can't believe it almost lost to that fucking stupid Asshole Kutcher movie.