Review of Speed Racer (2008) by Luis A. H — 18 Oct 2015

For what this movie was, it was pretty good. As a cartoon adaptation, it's pretty harmless. Sure, it did take some liberties with the source material, but it's not like with most films based on a cartoon such as "The Smurfs" movie, "Alvin and the Chipmunks" films or even "The Last Airbender" which had absolutely nothing connected to the cartoon. This movie, on the other hand does seem to look like somebody in the crew that made this movie actually saw the cartoon. The basic stuff is still there, Speed is a young car racer who wants to become the best car racer in the world, he has a friend named Trixie, a younger brother named Spritle a pet monkey, he has a brother named Rex who disappeared, he meets up with a racer known as Racer X who later turns out to be his brother, the list could go on. The characters look a lot like their animated counterparts (well, at least as much as possible, I mean, you can't have them to be big eyed like the japanese version), they remain with the personality they had in the cartoon (maybe a little bit more independent than in cartoon for some of them) and even the car designs are pretty faithful to the original.

So when people say that this is one of the worst movies out there, guess What. If it resembles the character personality, character design, car design and a lot of elements of the cartoon's story, then it's a freaking movie based on a cartoon that was more faithful that the other ones.

And all what I pointed out about this movie is what this movie should be given credit for. Changing the character entirely like they did in other movies based on cartoon or making them look nothing like their counterparts would a different thing.

And this movie should be given more appreciattion for what it did and for what it is. Especially seeing how this movie, along with Lone Ranger and some other good films that ended up having a poor rating like this and being down there with garbage like 50 shades because of it.