Pure Visual Adrenaline, like nothing you've ever seen before. Go! Speed Racer! Go!  

Its been a wierd summer already, and its only just begun. Iron Man came and blew us away beyond all expectations, Indiana Jones gave us what we wanted ... and between the two like a damp squib came, from the makers of The Matrix, ... Speed Racer. Which is quite possibly the strangest mega budget blockbuster you might ever see.

Ostensibly a childrens film, its designed to excite the five year of in all of us. It tells the story of Speed Racer, (for that is his name) a boy who grew up obsessed with cars and speed racing in the shadow of his successful older brother Rex Racer. When Rex racer died, Speed had racing in his blood and carried on the family line, determined to keep his memory alive. Racing is all he does - its all he knows. With his girlfriend Trixie beside him and his family - the Racer family who build and run their own racing cars - he goes head to head with the vested interests of the racing industry.... all at 400 miles an hour.

Dividing critics into a love it and hate it mentality, and keeping people away from the box office in droves, Speed Racer is nothing if not a slightly schizophrenic experience. Full of stunningly impressive visuals and bright lurid hypercolour thrill, Speed Racer is vibrant and incredible. The script is pure black and white, right and wrong pasted in broad brushstrokes devoid of subtext and subtlely. Its as if the Wachowki's took the criticism about the Matrix being too full of subtext, and washed it all away to be replaced with surface level dialogue.

But in many ways, this film is a tribute to the days long gone. Its like a cartoon brought to life. The bad guys are obviously bad and meant to be written that way in the same way as they were back decades ago, when their was no blurring of the moral lines.

The compass here is pure kids TV, every stereotype conformed to. The bad henchmen always have bad teeth and bad clothes and weird hair, and they only ever attack one at a time so they can be easily vanquished. Some even roar outrageously with big beards and dressed as barbarians , eating legs of chicken on banquet tables and somehow resembling Brian Blessed. Even when Ninjas attack and man eating piranha's start eating people, its all in pure good fun. The good guys are always pure and never waver from the path of righteousness. The punches goes "SOCK!" "KAM!" and "KER-POW!".  The good guys fight and they fly though the air, highlighted in shiny colours and everything else just wizzing past as bright lines. You saw it in the comic books, and you see it here.

But one thing stands out for Speed Racer; it redefines and rewrites the rule books of cinema like you wouldn't believe. Its a film that you either get in the first ten minutes, or will lose you completely. Its a purely fabricated, completely unreal, totally green screen enviroment.

And in that sense, it is unlike anything you've ever seen before. Take the hyperstylised imagery of 300, that unreal comic book hyperreality - and transplant it to kids movies. Of bright, lurid colours that pop from the screen like sugar candy, full of deliberately stylised decisions that accentuate the unrealiness of it all. Look at the backgrounds...no matter how far away they ever are, always in perfect, crystal clear focus. Just like a cartoon.

And its a film unlike anything else. Its like a cross between the very best of the Pixar movies - think the racing scenes of Cars, and the urban palette of the Incredibles where the everyday mom n pop family save the day - mixed in with the bizarre otherworldliness of Tron. Top it off with a serving of Spy Kids, and you're almost there.

And the racing scenes are incredible. Imagine the pod race in episode one - but with the gloves off, set as pure adrenaline, physics thrown out of the window and serving story, only story, where excitement is the only goal. The lines blur past like the Fast and Furious.

It may have flopped, but its a film that truly, definitely deserves to be seen on the big screen. Much of its stunning visual impact will be lost on anything smaller. Often visually impressionitic - there's a scene at the beginning where the daydreaming Speed Racer leaves the classroom to race in a scene thats pure kids imagination, doodlings come to life around him as he passes the chequered flag. its about repeating that excitement and joy of being young, and fulfilling your dreams.

Speed Racer may be a kids film at heart, but its also about being a kid. Where your dad was the hero that could do everything. Where your mom loved you. Where your dreams could come true. Where the good guys always won. Where there was never violence - there was...ACTION! Where you could close your eyes and make the world anew in your imagination.

It may have tanked but people will look upon Speed Racer as one of those films that people will talk about forever and ever, a cult classic, full of groundbreaking effects that tried to breach the limits of what a film could and could not do. Its Pure Visual Adrenaline, a sugar rush at 400 miles an hour. Its destined to become a misunderstood misfire that people will return to again and again.

You've never seen anything like it. And you might never again.

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