No speed no

Brain freeze: that’s the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about the Wachowski Brothers’ remake of 60’s Japanese anime “Speed Racer.” While the visuals are spectacularly sweet, they’re taken in too fast and in excessive amounts lead to one giant headache.

Speed Racer (Emile Hirsch), the World Racing League’s newest superstar, has dreamed of being a racer his entire life. Speed has a tight-knit family that is his racing team, consisting of Mom (Susan Sarandon), Pops (John Goodman), mischievous little brother Spritle (Paulie Litt), childhood girlfriend Trixie (Chrisitina Ricci), and the family chimpanzee Chim Chim.

When corporate sponsor Arnold Royalton (Roger Allam) comes knocking, Speed quickly finds out that racing isn’t the perfect little world he always pictured.

Although the colors and style of the film are vibrant and original, the visual tricks are relentless and get in the way of any sort of plot. Even the racing scenes aren’t able to build any suspense because for the most part you can not even tell what is going on.

“Speed Racer” has a stable of great actors, but they take a backseat to the visuals and style of the movie. Another problem is the excruciatingly long runtime, because film this frenetic shouldn’t have ever gone over the 90 minute mark.

By the time Speed joins the mysterious Racer X (Matthew Fox) to compete in the dangerous rally racing, the plot goes a bit awry. At this point, you are sick of color for the first time in your life and can’t stand the hyper-activity of the movie.

The DVD provides really only two special features, of which only one is actually decent. “Spritle in the Big Leagues” is a petty behind the scenes look of the film through the eyes of the obnoxious Paulie Litt.

On the other hand, “Speed Racer ‘Super-Charged’” is an in-depth look at the tracks, drivers, and cars in “Speed Racer,” providing some information that would perhaps been good for context in the movie itself.

Unless you are a fanatic of the original Japanese anime, I recommend you stay away from this eye raping of a film..