Some of you viewers may have had the opportunity to see the most recent anime/manga big screen live-action adaptation: Speed Racer. I was lucky enough to see it with friends, but unlucky with the inclusion of other theater patrons. Had their presence not been a factor in my film-going experience I surely would have shouted obscenities at the screen.

SPOILER WARNING

I don’t want to mislead you. There are some redeeming factors. The races are a sight to see. I would’ve been more pleased had the movie been nothing but clips of races. The maneuverability of the cars and the traditional Speed Racer technological add-ons made the actual racing slightly better than tolerable. Before I saw the movie, I felt like the bright colors and the technologically advanced cars would be unbelievable. Sadly enough it’s the only actually believable aspect of the movie.

The performances were adequate. Speed Racer has a great cast, but they have almost nothing to work with. Almost all of the actors do well within their respective roles, but come across flat because the characters were flat. The most glaring example is Christina Ricci’s character Trixie. There is no exploration of Trixie or her relationship with Speed. This, by no fault of her own, leads to Ricci playing Trixie as if she were a Barbie Doll with a helmet. The only reason I wanted to see the movie was Susan Sarandon and John Goodman. They, along with Matthew Fox, are overall the best performances. Sadly enough, there is little significant screen time for anyone other than Speed, Spritle, and Chim Chim.

The most infuriating thing about Speed Racer is any moment that Spritle and Chim Chim appear on screen. The Wachowskis focus entirely too much on trying to add comedy through the random insertion of Spiddle and Shim Shim into any given scene. Their primary function is to ruin every moment in the movie.

The camera effects take a close second on the infuriating-scale. The Wachowskis did their best to make this a live-action cartoon, and they succeeded much to the chagrin of the audience. In simple scenes in which conversations take place, as well as all the others, you can expect the camera to pan by with interlaced images of people who are standing next to each other. Sound confusing? Good, so is the camera work.

Coming up third on the infuriating-scale is the general feel of the movie. It is almost one big montage. This is partially credited to irritating camera work, and the random penetrations of Spittle and Crim Crim. Also a major reason for the extended montage feel is the excessive use of the montage. Moments benefited by montages are lessened in effect by the thirty montages that precede it. The entire first fifteen to twenty minutes of the movie are a mix of one lap of a race, portions of Speed’s childhood, and his older brother’s downfall; most of which is unnecessary for the story.

As for the story, if you’re familiar with the television show, there are few surprises. It holds true to the good-guy vs. the bad-guy scenario. The bad guy is obviously the corporate muckaty-muck, and the good guys are Speed and his family. No biggie. The problems come from how the story is treated. The Wachowskis take no time to explore character relationships, plot, or theme and just race through the movie, no pun intended. This may be intentional as a stylistic element to reflect an actual race and the rushed feel of the cartoon. Intentional or not, it was a mistake.

The meaning behind the movie trips over itself, hits the studio floor and gets confused from a concussive daze. It’s obvious they wanted that melodramatic moral, which quickly and ultimately becomes apparent as their intention. The only real impressive aspect of the movie is a mistake, because the movie is actually about the corruption of Speed Racer which makes for a problematic execution of the melodramatic moral. Sadly, Speed is the only character to change at all throughout the movie. He grows bitter, and angry. Then, like a mystical band-aid, the plot wraps up and suddenly everything’s ok. Only Speed never actually ascends from the pit of despair.

The Verdict: If you haven’t seen this movie then I suggest waiting for it to come on television. The only people that I suggest see this movie are easily pleased hardcore Speed Racer fanboys, and people who absolutely adored The Matrix 2 and 3. After the problematic final two thirds of the Matrix trilogy you would think Warner Bros. would keep a closer eye on the Wachowski Brothers’ projects. There is cinematic potential in Speed Racer, but that potential remains untapped.

-Vince

BEWARE THE SPOILERS

One of the things that made me greatly apperciate this movie more than most is that I had almost no idea of the plot before walking into the theater. Though Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull has been all over the place in merchandising and advertising, the trailers are mysterious and careful to give nothing away except that it’s Indiana Jones, it’s set in the ’50s and there are Communists, and there will be no attempt at hiding Harrison Ford’s age. So if you haven’t seen it yet, I strongly urge you to go before reading any more of this review. It’s the kind of movie I can’t begin to talk about without giving away all the things that will either really jazz you or really turn you off. Don’t read any more until you’ve gone to the theater.

It’s been 19 years since the last Indiana Jones movie, and the film is set exactly 19 years later. Like The Last Crusade, and unlike the other two, the film is very aware of its time in history and uses major events and issues of the time to its advantage. In Temple it was Nazis, here it’s Communists, and like everyone else in 1957, Indy is accused by the FBI as being one of them. I absolutely love this plot point and I wish more had been done with it. Indy gets kicked out of his school for it and then, just when you figure some dry FBI agent who serves for comic effect will follow Indy throughout the whole movie, it forgets about this and instead focuses on the mystery of the Crystal Skull and on Indy’s convoluted past over the years his character has no movies made about him. But I’m getting ahead of myself. At the end of the film, Indy has saved the day, somehow proving he wasn’t working with the Commies at all (I guess) and he’s promoted to assistant dean at the college he was just fired from. The historical context was great for a minute, but ultimately amounts to very little except providing us with the villains of the film.

One of the film’s greatest strengths was something I never would have expected would work, and that’s taking Indiana Jones into the realm of science fiction. This movie continues the franchise’s tradition of revealing every myth or legend that comes up as being entirely real. The previous films did two Christian legends and one Indian one, so why not deal with Roswell and aliens? Myths surrounding those things are just as legendary today and get a lot of attention on the news stands and on the History and Discovery channels. So this time, it turns out that the great Crystal Skulls are actually from aliens, and the power the legend claims whomever returns the final skull will gain is the power of knowledge. Following classic Indiana Jones formula, Irina Spalko (the lead female Soviet soldier played by Cate Blanchett of all people) does get this promised “power” and it destroys her. I was a little worried when she was revealed to be a telepath in the first twenty minutes of the film, because it didn’t seem to fit in the realm of the Indiana Jones universe. Then it was revealed that power came from the skull, and I was fine with it. The age-old knowledge-is-power theme is, of course, very relevant in today’s Internet culture, and I found it very appropriate for Indiana Jones to tackle it. In the context of 1957, the film very effectively brought home the message the knowledge is important, but that human beings should be humble enough to admit that too much knowledge can destroy.

Education was a big theme, and rightly so. Indiana Jones is a college professor and is immediately taken aback when his new sidekick Mutt Williams tells him he dropped out of school because he learns better on his own. At first, Indy tells him that’s okay as long as he does what he loves to do, but it’s obvious he doesn’t entirely buy his own advice. Especially since he takes it back halfway through the film when he discovers– in the film’s biggest mistake– that Mutt Williams is actually Henry Jones III, Indy’s son. Once he knows that, Indy insists that Mutt will go back to school, regardless of everything he said earlier.

I really resisted this dynamic. Though it makes no bones about Indy’s age (there’s a nice moment when Mutt says, “What are you, 80?”) the film, for the most part, doesn’t beat us over the head with it. At least, not until the tired old son-he-never-knew-about plot comes into play. Indy and Mutt had some fantastic chemistry early on. Both had something to learn from the other and their banter was cleverly written and delivered. This really broke down once the father-son issue popped up. The plot with the Soviets, the Crystal Skull and the missing professor who is obsessed with the Skulls was already very strong and reminiscent of the earlier pictures. Why did Lucas and Spielberg feel the need to add the most contrived idea they could possibly come up with?? It’s a fall-back idea, the thing you do in a “many years later” scenario because you can’t think of anything better. It’s Superman Returns in a nutshell. But they already had a solid story, so they didn’t need it. Mutt Williams (played by the always-fantastic Shea LaBouf) could have very easily been taken in by Indy, like the son he never had because he never settled down, instead of actually being his son, with a convoluted past where Indy got back together with Marion from the first film, got her pregnant but didn’t know it, ran off, and apparently was with the military at some point (because of “all those medals” he won).

Most of it’s problems stem from an attempt at tying up loose ends that were never there in the first place. I’m usually a big proponent for continuity– but not in this case. The original trilogy is three separate films, not one big story like Star Wars. There is some continuity; there are some references and call-backs in some films to earlier ones. But in order to get everyone into the theater for this one, it seems that Lucas and Spielberg wanted to try and use this one to tell us everything we always wondered about… except none of us were wondering. The movie seems to pretend Indy and Marion ever had any chemistry at all in the first film, just to force this father-son plot. Karen Allen returns to play Marion and she’s not bad… per sey. Honestly, she doesn’t do much of anything, and after her initial introduction into the movie where she and Indy fight just like they did in the first movie, she stops even seeming like the same character. Later, when she and Indy all at once seem to decide to get back together, they keep having these weird googly-eye moments. These are not Clark Kent and Lois Lane. Why are we expected to assume they were always supposed to be soul-mates? When she asks Indy if there have been other women, he says yes, but the problem was, none of them were her. That’s cute, but I don’t buy it.

But this is to say nothing negative about Mutt Williams. At the end, we’re given the impression that he’ll follow in his father’s footsteps and become the next Indiana Jones. I have no problem with this. If there’s a spin-off planned, I’m all for it. But I wish he hadn’t been Indy’s actual son. There was an attempt to parallel the relationship between Indy and his own father, and it just didn’t work. Too much fan service in a film that was already working in its self-contained story.

Happily, Harrison Ford is still very much Indiana Jones. I never felt like he tried to play it too old or too dark. He was a little rougher around the edges, but he had been through a lot, and he went through more in this movie than in the other three combined. He gets beat up, blown up, dropped from high places and almost sucked under ground in this movie. The film was trying to prove that Harrison Ford could still do the stunts and that Indy was still the same character no matter his age, and I loved it. Okay, so maybe the nuclear test scene where Indy rolls a hundred times in a refrigerator was a little much… but it was awesome.

That being said, there was far too much CGI. It had a white-washed look that successfully made much of it feel like the earlier pictures, and I appreciated that. But there were places where I was taken out. The CGI wasn’t such a problem with the real big special effects– the pillars that rose at the end, for instance, looked great. What I couldn’t get over were the cartoon gophers and monkeys. Not kidding. They looked like Dreamworks computer animated movies and they had no business being in the movie. Completely misplaced.

All-in-all, though, it was Indiana Jones and it was well worth it. It had its scenes that could have been in any of the first three, and that was great. Probably the best being the scene where Indy is sinking in a sand pit and Marion and Mutt are trying to pull him out with a snake. Indy won’t grab on unless they call it a rope. Priceless.

LLAP

-Cap’n Logan