I
There are a handful of movies I haven’t stopped thinking about since seeing them this year. Sheep Detectives, of course. The refreshingly honest and transparent protagonist of Conclave, paired with stunningly beautiful shots of hands, faces, and movement. The masterful tension of Apollo 13, paired with the desire to constantly research what liberties the movie took compared to reality.
And Speed Racer.
Halfway through Speed Racer, I was convinced it was a bad movie. It’s frenetic, full of goofy screen wipes that only get increasingly elaborate as the film goes on. Forty minutes in, I paused to grab lunch, and honestly wrestled with whether or not to return. I did return, in the middle of one of the most bonkers scenes I have ever seen.
Before I describe this, I’ll cut to the chase: Speed Racer is a good movie wearing the trappings of a bad movie. It’s shlocky, over-the-top, incredibly earnest, and oftentimes over saturated. Also there’s a monkey. Every time the monkey came on screen, I laughed, because I had forgotten about it as soon as it left my field of view. And every time I asked “why is there a monkey??” And by the end of the film I found myself nodding, sure, of course, that’s Chim-Chim, glad he’s here.
Spoilers for Speed Racer (2008) follow.
II
I stopped in the middle of a scene called “No Thanks”. In it, the film’s villain launches into a Shakespearean monologue, delivered almost too-fast to follow (fitting for a movie about going as fast as possible). While delivering this incredible speech, the actor seems to at once channel Kevin Spacey and Alec Baldwin, and I mean both of those comparisons in the best possible way.
But not only does the writing step it up five whole notches here, the rest of the movie follows. While he is talking, the film seamlessly transitions (there are very few cuts in this movie, see above: re screen wipes) to a shot of Speed Racer facing, opposing the villain. The camera shifts, almost intangibly, and we are in the car, in the future, living out the predictions of the villain as he describes them, like the heist scene in Ocean’s 11.
But unlike the first time I watched Ocean’s 11, I followed this perfectly. It was the future now. And then, it wasn’t. Snap back to the room, back to the monologue. A glimpse forward.
Except that’s not what happened. We didn’t snap back to the room, we wiped into a scene of Speed Racer (short for Speederick1)’s brother Mario-Karting down the hallway of a Willy Wonka factory while air guitaring Free Bird. It’s nonsensical!
A third of the shots in this movie look like they belong in Spy Kids 3D.
A fifth of them look like something from Wes Anderson. There’s a scene where John Goodman dresses like Mario.
And then there’s these purely digital scenes where it doesn’t even look like a movie anymore, but a cut scene from a video game that doesn’t exist.
And this scene is when I realized that nothing about this movie was an accident. Every single design choice here is deliberate, even the ones that force me to recoil, that make me consider not returning from my mid-movie lunch.
40 minutes into this movie, I locked in. By the end, my attitude had shifted. I don’t think it’s a bad movie, but it looks like one, and it looks like one on purpose. It hits every emotional beat, and it does things with the camera that casually defy the suggestions of physics.
And just a few days after I watched it, I bought the 4k and put it on again. I don’t buy a lot of movies, but this one took a second watch just to actually appreciate what went into making it.
“Is Speed Racer good?” is the wrong question. It’s fascinating. It’s intentionally polarizing. it’s a wonderful piece of art, and I genuinely have not been able to stop thinking about it.
III
The Watchowskis (oh did I mention this was the first thing they did after the Matrix?) defined a generation of both fashion and cinema. Bullet time was instantly aped everywhere. Shrek 2 has a bullet time scene! made this movie because they could, and because no one else could copy them if they wanted to. Three Matrix movies were the Rosalind Frick to Hollywood’s Crick and Watson, and the Watchowski sisters said ok, try this. See if you. I believe this movie was the next step in a game of HORSE that no one else realized they were playing.
There’s a somewhat infantalizing and certainly apocryphal story that when natives first saw European ships, they just went full West World: doesn’t look like anything to me. They simply could not process the ships, since they were so far outside their lived experience.
If I’d seen Speed Racer in 2008, I wouldn’t have known how to process it. I would have said it was bad and never thought about it again. But watching it today, I think it’s a beautiful, deliberate piece of art that wants you to hate it at first look… and then keep looking.
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Not really, but Speed Racer is his government name ↩