List Price: $28.98You Pay Only: $13.99 You Save: $14.99 (52%)Prices subject to change.
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Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Binding: DVD
Brand: Warner Brothers
EAN: 0085391176398
Format: Color, DVD-Video, Widescreen, NTSC
Label: Warner Home Video
Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Warner Home Video
Region Code: 1
Release Date: September 16, 2008
Running Time: 135 minutes
Sales Rank: 414
Studio: Warner Home Video
Theatrical Release Date: 2008
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 09/16/2008 Rating: Pg
Amazon.com:
An over-the-top, sensory overload experience determined to replicate its frantic, television-anime origins, Speed Racer is wild enough to induce a headache or wow a viewer with one dazzling effect after another. Adapted for the big screen as a live-action feature, Speed Racer is written and directed by Larry and Andy Wachowski, the sibling team behind the intensely satisfying The Matrix and its busier, less interesting sequels. Where the rich mythmaking of The Matrix was entirely accessible, however, Speed Racer's overwhelming and gratuitously complicated story exposition is an enormous challenge to follow, let alone embrace. After a while, one simply surrenders to the unbroken din of dialogue concerning corporate chicanery, corruption in the sport of racing, and a value conflict between racing as a family business versus multinational cash cow. At the same time, the film's hyper-real equivalent of the old Speed Racer cartoon's great whoosh of color, motion, and edgy production design--such as inventive uses of scene-changing wipes, bold framing, shifting perspectives--are more overbearing than fun.
Emile Hirsch plays Speed Racer, younger brother of a deceased racing legend, Rex, and son of car designer Pops (John Goodman). The latter invented Speed's Mach 5, and is singularly unimpressed by an offer from a giant conglomerate that would lock Speed into exclusive racing services. Speed opts instead for family loyalty, incurring the wrath of the conglomerate's unctuous head (Roger Allam). With family honor on the line and the affections of girlfriend Trixie (Christina Ricci) behind him, Speed hits the track in hopes of fulfilling his destiny as a master racer. The cast is largely enjoyable, including Susan Sarandon as Speed's mom, Matthew Fox as mysterious Racer X, and a pair of chimps as the irrepressible Chim-Chim. All well and good, but in a movie that lives or dies by the excitement level of races that look like computer-animated Hot Wheels action, Speed Racer is a dreary adventure. --Tom Keogh
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - As exciting as when I saw it at the theater!!!
Ever since i was a kid, I always dreamed of the day they'd make a Speed Racer movie. So when it finally came, it was going back to my childhood years!!!! I was so excited that at the end I was shouting with the audience!!! Now, having this wonderful Blu-ray edition at home allows me to enjoy over and over again the adventures that kept me going as a child!!!
Rating: - The Perfect Live-Action Cartoon
Now, I've seen my share of cartoons elevated to live-action in The Big Hollywood Show. Some were abysmal, like Casper. Some actually were pretty good, like the first Scooby-Doo movie. But while the movies and the originals are related, they're still separate elements, each their own thing. A cartoon can't be live-action and stay true to its cartoon-ness. Cartoons offer impossible contortion and endless manipulation of set and scene, action and POV, and most importantly the complete and total abrogation of the laws of physics, not to mention that whole life/death thing. But then came this movie. This movie is as true to the original Speed Racer cartoon as it possibly can be; it is without a doubt the best live-action cartoon that has yet to be made.
Now, what do I mean by live-action cartoon? Well, Shoot 'Em Up is a cartoon, and its success is that it knows this, and doesn't take itself that seriously. But junk like the The Fast and the Furious and The Transporter Collection movies, they pretend to some kind of legitimacy, while telling an action-packed story they're essentially remaining in the realm of the possible, despite physical laws and imperatives going out the window with the first chase scene.
A live-action cartoon is not just swapping people and sets for cells and/or backgrounds, auteur production designers for Korean animators, and the mandatory CGI green screen. It's so much deeper than that. A true live-action cartoon is about the delicate translation ... Read More
Rating: - A Complete Rollercoaster Ride!
The critics were absolutely DEAD WRONG about this movie. If you Metacritic this movie, the disconnect will become readily apparent. The Critic average was 37% while the User average was 79%. I unfortunately didn't pay much attention to the general public reviews at that point, but seeing Speed Racer utterly changed my opinion on that, especially after the critics gave Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull a 75% average (I can only assume that they were paid off).
Luckily my sister convinced me to give Speed Racer a try. I was blown away. It is the most visually innovative film I have seen in I don't know how long. The races are spectacular, from the CG cars burning through the completely improbable tracks to the mid-race close ups that zoom from car to car, never breaking the flow of action. I expect the visual techniques used in Speed Racer to be emulated in much the same way that the techniques of The Matrix were and still are today.
As for the story and characters, they are fun, simple and over the top, precisely as they should be for this kind of movie. This brings me to one of the main points about this movie and why it succeeds so well, where so may other movies fail. Consistency. There is a consistency of language, tone, themes and visualization in this movie that is completely engaging. It never breaks its hyper-realistic form. Few films achieve the level of consistency that Speed Racer does. It's not Shakespeare and it never tries to be. It is a fun and ... Read More
Rating:  - Primary coloured and neon lit
Clearly, if the creators (The Wachowski brothers, directors of The Matrix) of the movie want you to remember anything about it- it's the BRIGHT COLORS.
This is movie making from the pages of a comic book, with the colors, acting and plot that this entails. When it started, it was so garish and hyperkinetic that I prepared myself for the worst... however, I have to admit that as I watched it, it actually did start to suck me in to this bizarre pseudo reality, and I began rooting for Speed Racer (That's his name, not just his title..).
Speed Racer is the car obsessed son in the Racer family, his father the designer of racing cars. When he starts performing in major races, a huge corporate sponsor woos him, but amazingly, it turns out that the big corporation has money, and not the best interests of the Racer Family, at heart. A few chases later, via a mysterious ally, an uneasy alliance with a rival Japanese driver, and ninjas, we reach the good versus bad confrontation.
Nothing about this is real - everything is hyper real in a calculated way - remember, this is adapted from a Japanese anime. Yet the actors, even in a wide eyed cartoon style way, do gradually do make you accept they might just be believable. Even if on the podium the winners drink a hyper white milk, rather than any other sparkling drinks...
The story linking the action scenes is actually passable, and is actually a welcome relief from the action scenes which could leave you woozy with an overdose of movement ... Read More
Rating: - Great deal!
The 3-disc set is great! The bonus features are cool and the digital copy is nice to keep on your computer. Blu-ray graphics are amazing!
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