Mike Go! Go! Go!

I know you dont care, but....

I went to see Speed Racer this past weekend at my local IMAX theatre. I knew the story was utter fertilizer but I also knew that the Wachowski Brothers could be counted on for astonishing feats of cinematic legerdemain so if I was going to insult my cerebral cortex I was going to do it at 70mm.

In a word: eye-popping.

I was enthralled from start to finish, save for those mercifully brief periods when the characters stopped to talk to one another. I realize that writers have families to feed, too, but in cases like this I would have been just as pleased with title cards reading "Sir Royalton arrives with a sinister scheme" and then getting back to the action-action-action.

The film had small splashes of near-genuine emotion, supplied unsurprisingly by Susan Sarandon and John Goodman, even if they were basically playing against the SAG version of cardboard cutouts. Roger Allam made an effective villain, English of course, but he took the role wayyyy too seriously. I kept getting the feeling the directors would have preferered Tim Curry instead. I know the audience would have.

Will this film go into my permanent collection? Due to its razor-thin storyline, no, but I may watch it again someday with the soundtrack off and Pink Floyd turned way, way up.

=mike=