"Speed Racer" a Triumph of Visual Design

Style Over Substance... But What Style

I have seen "Speed Racer", or at least what elements of it my eyes managed to pick up. And to see that is to see something indeed. And consider me a fan.

I find it, on occasion, instructive to look at movies as the descendants of movies that came before them. The newer films grow up with advantages their parents never had, but if they see far it is because they stand on the shoulders of giants. For example, "Cloverfield", one of the more interesting 2008 flicks to cross my radar, was the natural extension of the '90s indie sensation "The Blair Witch Project".

"Speed Racer", then, is the offspring of the underrated 90s film "Dick Tracy", itself a visually audacious adaptation of unpromising source material that found its genius not in narrative but in form. "Dick Tracy" had the utterly wild idea to take the color palette and design aesthetics of its comic strip literally, resulting in something we'd never seen before; "Speed Racer" also rejoices in bringing cartoons to life, primarily with respect to their physics.

It's a digital dream, not quite a cartoon and certainly not photorealistic, where design is king: I think the moment you first fall in love with the look (or don't) is our first exterior shot, with deep blue skies and bold green grass and everything disconcertingly in focus. To criticize it for not looking real is like refusing to see a Broadway musical because no one you know expresses themselves in song.

I hate the fact that it's inevitably going to be called a visual effects extravaganza, because I think it's moved beyond the realm of effects and into just being a partially animated film, and we should discuss it in terms of design and photography rather than pixels. But I have had my tantrum.

(Bear in mind I'm no Wachowski apologist; I despise "The Matrix" and I found their bowdlerization of "V for Vendetta" irresponsible. Nor am I defending it out of love for the source material; my only familiarity with the anime comes from the GEICO and "Family Guy" parodies. I'm just saying, here.)