An overwritten, frantically stylized adaptation of the 1960s anime television series from Japan, Speed Racer may add a few colors to the rainbow, but it adds nothing to the movies. And revolutionary filmmaking is what we’ve come to expect from directing siblings Andy and Larry Wachowski. Emile Hirsch stars as the title character, a racing phenom with far too many personal demons for a movie this thematically flimsy. The racing scenes are less interesting as action sequences than as wild experiments in color. Everything blurs together in Speed Racer, so that you rarely get a pure red, blue or white but instead a melted combination of the three – sort of like those Bomb Pops popsicles after they’ve been out in the sun. After more than two hours of this, Speed Racer left me feeling as if I’d also been out in the sun too long.
