It’s perhaps appropriate that I caught Larry and Andy Wachowski’s Speed Racer in the miserable throes of a head cold/flu, hopped up on a cocktail of over-the-counter meds. After all, it’s essentially the big screen equivalent of a hallucinatory cattle prod to the senses.

A hyper-charged, gumball-colored family flick (the production design
seems inspired by Dick Tracy, The Cat and
The Hat and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the action by Ice Cube’s biker flick Torque) based on the old cartoon by Tatsuo Yoshida,
and debuting simultaneously in conventional theaters and on IMAX
screens, Speed Racer certainly has to set some sort of cinematic record
for screen wipes. It’s shot in tight close-ups, and never lets you
forget that it’s a movie. A funny thing happens on the way to the dulling, sensory overload,
though: the exacting construction of the Wachowskis’ script, as well as
some invested performances by its cast, creates enough of an emotional
through-line that one can, with a hard squint, almost take Speed Racer seriously. Almost.

As his name would suggest, the pure thrill of driving is everything to
young Speed (Emile Hirsch). Racing is in his blood, and the mechanical
skill of his father Pops (John Goodman), the designer of his thundering
Mach 5, and the support of his Mom (Susan Sarandon) and longtime gal
pal Trixie (Christina Ricci) have helped lay a sturdy foundation for
Speed, even if he is still haunted by the memory of his older brother
Rex. After turning down the ego-maniacal owner (Roger Allam) of Royalton
Industries, though, Speed finds himself grappling with the realization
that racing isn’t just about honest competition — it’s big business,
and a dirty one at that. Teaming up with Inspector Detector (Benno
Fürmann) and the mysterious Racer X (Matthew Fox), he sets out to foil
Royalton and other corrupt corporate interests.

Like other Hollywood studio-peddled tales cautioning about the reach
of big business or government (Paul Weitz’s In Good
Company, and the Wachowski-produced V for Vendetta, say), the
anti-establishment story at the core of Speed Racer seems more than a bit
incongruous if pondered for too long. I’d allow, though, that just as
with the Matrix series, the Wachowskis manage to undeniably create a
new thing here; the movie is a technical marvel on
many levels. Yet for all its ample visual pop, the racing scenes never
really meant a thing to me; all the CGI renders them, well, just a
cartoon. Late in the film, a stylized, group-rumble fight sequence, meanwhile,
plays as the logical, hyped-up extension of the old bam-pow! Batman TV
fisticuffs. Rightly or wrongly, after bullet-time, that feels like a
water-treading ploy for wide-scale embrace, an acquiescence to the
corporate cookie-cutter culture that Speed Racer claims to rail
against. (Warner Bros., PG, 135 minutes)