"Speed Racer"?

With its bubble-gum color schemes and shamelessly unrealistic CGI, the Wachowski Brothers' latest effort, "Speed Racer," doesn't exactly bring back that Saturday morning cartoon feeling. I've watched the previews and have seen the featurette, and the overall impression I get is that the movie will be a two-hour riff off the podracing scene from "The Phantom Menace" (itself a cinematic reference to the charioteering scene from "Ben Hur"), but with a wilder palette and "Matrix"-style camera work. The brothers should have gone whole hog and made the movie entirely CG. After having gone through the Star Wars prequel trilogy, I'm not all that keen on the fusion of CGI and live action, unless the CGI is compellingly rendered (as is arguably the case in "Revenge of the Sith," though Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies are better examples of what I mean).

Should I see "Speed Racer"? Right now, I'm leaning toward "Nah."


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