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Speed Racer
Warner Bros. Pictures


7.8

based on 37 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 242 votes
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FILM:

GAMES:

Speed Racer (Wii)

MPAA RATING: PG for sequences of action, some violence and language

Starring Emile Hirsch, Christina Ricci, John Goodman, Susan Sarandon, and Matthew Fox

Hurtling down the track, careening around, over, and through the competition, Speed Racer is a natural behind the wheel. Born to race cars, Speed is aggressive, instinctive, and, most of all, fearless. His only real competition is the memory of the brother he idolized--the legendary Rex Racer, whose death in a race has left behind a legacy that Speed is driven to fulfill. Speed is loyal to the family racing business, led by his father, Pops Racer, the designer of Speed's thundering Mach 5. When Speed turns down a lucrative and tempting offer from Royalton Industries, he not only infuriates the company's maniacal owner but uncovers a terrible secret--some of the biggest races are being fixed by a handful of ruthless tycoons who manipulate the top drivers to boost profits. If Speed won't drive for Royalton, Royalton will see to it that Speed never crosses another finish line. The only way for Speed to save his family's business and the sport he loves is to beat Royalton at his own game. With the support of his family and his loyal girlfriend, Trixie, Speed teams with his one-time rival--the mysterious Racer X--to win the race that had taken his brother's life: the death-defying, cross-country rally known as the Crucible. Yet, the ultimate test of Speed Racer's true racing grit will be at the pinnacle event of the World Racing League, the Grand Prix. But standing between Speed and the checkered flag are the world's best--and most cutthroat--competitors, fueled by a million-dollar bounty from Royalton to the driver who takes Speed out once and for all. (Warner Bros. Pictures)

GENRE(S):	Action \| Family/Kids
WRITTEN BY:	Andy Wachowski Larry Wachowski
DIRECTED BY:	Andy Wachowski Larry Wachowski
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: September 16, 2008 Theatrical: May 9, 2008
RUNNING TIME:	129 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

Premiere Glenn Kenny

This is not a film occurring in an alternate or imaginary reality; rather, it is a film of NO reality, that is, a picture that changes the rules of its universe strictly according to its creators' whims.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

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

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

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.

Time Richard Corliss

Speed Racer announces the arrival of the virtual movie. If you watch the film overwhelmed by the assault of seductive visual information and wonder what you're seeing, here's the happy answer: the future of movies.

Variety Todd McCarthy

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.

Newsweek David Ansen

Speed Racer creates a timeless, visually seductive world suspended somewhere between the pop '60s and the sci-fi future.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

Filled with energy and visual pizzazz and at least strives for something more than dumb entertainment.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

This one is a kiddie show all the way, with characters as broad and one-dimensional as a billboard, a vision of good and evil as simple as a bumper sticker and a tiresome chimpanzee mugging through every other scene like something from a bad Tarzan movie.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

Unlike 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.

Empire Ian Nathan

It'll split the ranks like a pizza cutter: you might admire it as a Warholian blur of pop art, gawp and gasp at its Hot Wheels-for-real dynamism, or get a headache.

New York Daily News Joe Neumaier

The cast is generally game for playing cardboard cutouts, with Goodman having the most fun.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

There is one high note. You can approach Speed Racer as the trippiest stonerfest since Stanley Kubrick took his space odyssey.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

It's hard to say whether the Wachowski brothers' live action take on the Japanese Speed Racer cartoons is more irritating because it looks like a Hot Wheels video game or because the brothers seem to think that there's a powerful family drama humming away beneath the flashing lights and spinning wheels.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

If this action extravaganza represents the future of movies, it's going to be a sad, dead and awful future.

Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar

It isn't going to set the world on fire, but it's perfectly acceptable for what it is.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

There's something here for everyone to dislike - the whole clan can have fun making fun of this thing.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

It's a family film done as a trip film. It is a trip, but it's a bad trip.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

The movie demands you be a glutton for sensation and then has the nerve to ask why you're not hungrier.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Young 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.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

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.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

Borderline-experimental in the way it challenges the limits of perception. It's forward-thinking, visionary, and much of the time unwatchable.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

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.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Speed Racer is chaotic as a six-ring circus, gaudy as a transvestites convention and soullessly cute as a robot puppy.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Yes, it's a candy-colored Day-Glo world, but there's a liveliness missing from this lead-footed Speed Racer.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

This movie sets out to honor and refresh a youthful enthusiasm from the past and winds up smothering the fun in self-conscious grandiosity.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

Chances are, after they've passed the two-hour mark, viewers will share the same collective, if unspoken, wish: Go, Speed Racer. Go.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Gaudier than a Hindu-temple roof, louder than the Las Vegas night, Speed Racer is a cathedral of glitz.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

There's more story, heart, and – cutting to the chase, the quick, and the dead – pure, unadulterated fun contained within a scant five minutes of Rockstar Games' new Grand Theft Auto IV video game than there is in the whole of Speed Racer.

Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano

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, and it's hard to watch them bop around like avatars in a flat, airless, digital world.

Chicago Reader Andrea Gronvall

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.

Slate Dana Stevens

The 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.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Such a dull, clunky, joyless mess, it's hard to believe the people who made it understand much about movies.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

Orgy, hell: The film is like a nightmare in which you're trapped in an arcade with screens on all sides and no eyelids. Based on an elemental but happily streamlined Japanese cartoon (an anime precursor), it's an eyesore, a shambles, with incoherent action and ear-buckling dialogue.

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

Though the film is not as criminally poor as "V for Vendetta," which the Wachowskis wrote in 2005, it struck me as more insidious.

New York Post Kyle Smith

This adventurously awful film is awful in many ways at once.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

This isn't a picture filled with wonder and a sense of fun; it's so jaded and crass that I almost wonder if it's a highly unscientific experiment designed to gauge how little audiences will settle for these days. Manic and multicolored, Speed Racer is an excess of nothingness.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

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.

The average user rating for this movie is 7.8 (out of 10) based on 242 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Jay H. gave it a6:
Too over the top and I did not care for the stylized special effects, but it did have some imagination and a good pace, as well as some memorable moments. The acting was fine.

Kira gave it a9:
Ok so i saw this movie when it came out and then looked at these reviews and i am frankly disappointed. Miles C. is not giveing this movie a fair rating at all. This movie was meant for kids and for adults who like this show as a kid. First no one has given a good reason for this being a bad movie but I can think of many good reasons. The animation and CG is great and the racetrack during the Grand Prix is very creative and colorful. Oh and this is movie based on an ANIME so yea dont expect it to be the most amazing movie in the world. They simulated the old Mach 5 well with its old gadgets, the storyline was find i dont think it is bad i mean ok so its cliche like the grand prix is rigged yadda but speed is out there to try to prove it wrong and show royalton who's boss. THERE IS A STORYLINE! (although not the best they could have thought of) the end where trixie is kissed by speed is also great where the flashes become hearts, the whole face moving an turning thing going to a new scene it creative but a little overdone but still well done, and yes the whole town is cartooney because...hmmm...well THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE CARTOONEY!!! But all in all this was a great movie and all those out there that rant on it, think of some good reasons and then you will have an argument with something behind it. O yea and some parts were way kiddish the whole like royalton tour with the dirvers being tested and chim chim and the other little kid....idk his name in royalton just cruising but once again this movie is to entertain children as well adults so they had to put some kiddish things in it.

Jonny Boy gave it a1:
While the races are fast-paced and somewhat exciting, you'll be disapointed that you can't tell what is even going on. This is Speedracer, a film that concentrates on looks more than anything else. And it shows. The film's "comic relief" is Spritle and his pet monkey, however, they are more annoying that funny. The family learns that a big company has controlled who wins in each race for the last 50 years. That is about as complicated as the storyline gets. The next hour or so is so boring, you would like to walk out of the theater, however, you stay because you think, jsut maybe, it could turn for the better. Well don't stay. Save yourself the trouble and money on this film and stay as far away from it as you can.

Julius H. gave it a10:
I could not believe how great this movie was. The ending alone was the best reason for seeing this movie the whole thing was like comparing it to the first time you hear a good Elton John song, the lights the cheering the explosion everything was perfect, a tear came to my eye after. and John Goodman beats up a ninja, it was awe inspiring. A wonderful recreation of an old cartoon.

Andrew R. gave it a10:
I don't understand why all these mega critics where so appalled by the effects, because they were definently in the commercials leading up to the movie release so if they disliked them there they should not have went at all. The plot has been attacked over and over, because it is a simple plot with an inspiring message. Nothing to complicated so far. It was a kids movie and i knew this when i entered the theater and i was pleased to the extent of loving this movie more than The Dark Night. The effects were tremendous and they had my eyes bleeding......in total admiration...it was something new and fresh and something i have not seen before and that's why i love it. The makers of this film took a risk in this extravagant style and it was all worth it. This has been the only movie to truly wow me this summer, and i am not an avid reader of speed racer or any manga. I have not even seen the cartoon before, but what i have seen thus far is something i loved to watch. If some high paid movie critics didn't love it. No problem for me its not my fault they are to selfrightous to sit down and enjoy a great movie with a simple inspiring plot married to the greates visuals i have seen yet....yes.....even better than The Dark Knight.

Chris V.K gave it a9:
Too much like the cartoon for critics to handle, and too fast for their crusty old eyes to take in. This movie was outrageous fun.

Lam L. gave it a10:
I have now seen the film and it is a 10 plus. If you read the negative reviews below from users, you will notice that either they have no valid criticism (they just merely say things that equate to namecalling), or they have no idea what they are doing (mental swisscheese). One person only saw it because it was showing after iron man!! Go get a life if you can, pal. Others are shocked that a monkey is in the film. That says it all right there does it not? The professional critics are not much better if at all. I can see that the people that are giving negative scores are doing it because everyone has an as*hole right? They are haters and are unhappy because they don't get it. The film is just one more thing they don't get in life. They don't like how the rest of us get it. If I wasn't getting paid for it, why would I waste time w/ actually spending free time writing and posting hate mail. What? To help out ohers?!?! I doubt that, and wouldn't trust a hater one whit!! That says it all!! THIS FILM ROCKS!!

Speed Racer Warner Bros. Pictures

Speed Racer
Warner Bros. Pictures