Speed Racer (2008): The Revival of Asian Cartoon Culture

Based on the popular cartoon in early 90s, Speed Racer sent to the silver screen throught the hands of Wachowski Brothers. It is a very colourful movie in sense that the directors play a lot with cartoon effects and also green screen. Speed Racer embrace one's eyes with colours, movements and also imaginative scenes of racing and fighting.

For the first 10 to 20 minutes, you might get nausea feeling just like Cloverfield, Speed Racer gives you the high speed scenes of unexplainable race in cartoon world. however, after sometimes, you might get used to it and actually enjoy the movie despite of the only reason why i didn't give this movie a 5/5.

Critics might found this movie as disturbing in sense that it gives you nothing but nausea feeling or senseless cars who can leap to the air and worse, the illegal race that even scarier than that of Fast and Furious. My suggestion is a fan of real racing cars should not watch this movie as it is too imaginative and will make them shook their head throughout the movie in confusions.

The portrait of Racer family in this movie is simply and perfectly amazing. From costume, it is just super as they seriously concerning in costume that Speed wearing to make it exactly the same as what he wears in the anime series. Also the other characters such as Pop Racer, Mum Racer also Sparky and Chimp-Chimp. There are a lot of comical and non-sensical scenes involving Sparky and Chimp-Chimp that cause you too laugh badly.

In my opinion, i threw the last star of this movie for the South Korean actor; RAIN. no offence to the casting team or Rain's fan around the world. but it is for real and for scarily real that Rain cant speak English for goodness sake! i understand that the the movie portray character Taejo as asian that barely speak English. But let's take it to real life, when you speak asian-accented-english, would you even be involved in business or racing cars like that? well, kinda difficult for me to take it. but Rain's appearance in this movie is just seriously disturbing and it should be banned.

Little bit trivia from editor's account. you should guess how many Asians are used to make this movie? i would say a lot, main casts, other casts and also useless cast (such as acting as radio correspondant from Japan or China). in a sense or two, this movie is just like a tribute for Asian people. Be Proud! (Well, they shouldnt only put "No Animal Were Harmed In The Making Of This Movie" but also "No Asians Were Harmed In The Making Of This Movie")

Shorter Reviews:

Story: 4/5

Casts: 4/5 (as usual, one star gone for Rain)

Costumes: 5/5 (for equally the same costume as what they used in Anime version)

Jokes: 3.5/5

Overall: 4/5 (highly recomended!!)