Speed racer
THERE IS SPOLIERS
Okay, not gonna lie, I didn't knew about this movie existence up until 2 hours and 30 minutes ago. I was somewhat bored looking for something to watch and there was a video about it. Naturally, what I like to do is to first watch the movie and then the full video so I'm not as biased. This time though I watched a little bit of the video and saw that it was from the same filmmakers as the Matrix, which I have first watched recently and quite enjoyed. That got me curious: a family movie from the creators of The Matrix (which is definetely not a family movie), what can we get? So I watched the movie
watches the movie
I really didn't expect to enjoy this as much as I had. It really has that sort of... Stephen Chow-ness to it (?) but it actively fails at comedy? Well, I didn't enjoyed the comedy of the movie as much as the writing and editing.
You know, I love when filmmakers don't strive for realism in their CGI use and let it be loose and imperfect, this movie happens to be a very good example of this. I enjoyed a lot how quirky things look and generally how quirky the movie is. It has a sort of a unusual storyline (for a family movie that is) and suprisingly a good variety in the acts. At some point it turns into fighting which is cool, although quirky, back to racing and then drama.
I also like that that the movie doesn't try to overly explain itself and it's ideas, like, here, we have a domesticated monkey and our family races supercars in what it looks like Mario Kart racetracks. Admitelly, I'm a bit naive and didn't saw the plot twist coming when Rex planned his death and stuff despite the signs. A somewhat not-as-happy-as-it-could-have-been ending, which is nice as I grew very tired of non-consequential endings. This movie could easily get the same idea across if Rex revealed itself and stuff.
Also, I fucking love the credits scenes. It's so Satanicpornocultshop, love it.
As for the criticism, not a big fan of the overly saturated look, specially during the race scenes which have no control of the colors whatsoever. While that makes it more "CGI-esque", there's even more limited media that manages to have decent color contrast across. I feel like they could have done a significantly better job here to improve readibility while making it look more timeless and accessible. Also the comedy is pretty cringe, not a fan but I can handle it.