Tag: 2 out of 4

In trying to watch at least one documentary a week, I get a bit excited when I get to see a newer documentary, freshly released and ready to take on the world.

Mission Blue came out mid August as a Netflix Original Documentary, which of course meant that it was immediately available to watch. Not running around the indie markets and festivals for a year first.

And hey. I like Netflix original stuff sometimes. Or at least I think I would, if I had seen anything outside of Arrested Development or House Of Cards (just season 1, shh).

Mission Blue is the new Orange Is The New Black.

Mission Blue is a very very simple documentary. It is about Sylvia Earle, a woman marine biologist from the mid 1900s and on who helped change the science around the world. She was certainly a pioneer in the field, being at one point the first person to go beyond a specific depth in the ocean, and even living in an underwater research facility for a few weeks.

And where is she now? Still doing science job stuff. Yay old people!

More or less, this documentary was made after a TED Talk in 2009 of the same talk, where Sylvia had a very simple idea. She wants to set up protected ecosystems and environments around the world’s oceans where no commercial development or farming can occur. No bullshit, just fish and fish accessories.

And hey, it is a good idea. Sure. Why not. Like national parks. As long as I can still eat my fish and power my car, then you know I am definitely fine with that.

Outside of this novel idea, we just get to see a lot about Sylvia’s life and accomplishments, what she is doing now, and bad stuff happening to our oceans.

Overall, Mission Blue was interesting, but just felt like a bio piece on a person. I guess documentaries can be used for that purpose, but it makes most of this feel like an hour episode of some show that probably exists on the Biography Channel.

Nothing about this was super elite quality wise or showing me that much that I haven’t seen before. But it was exciting seeing James Cameron, because James Cameron raises the bar significantly by being in this documentary.

Found footage films get a lot of hate. So much that now when any movie is filmed by a character in that movie, that is what it is called regardless of the reason. Most of the time it is a simple style reason. But because The Blair Witch Project was first, that places this silly title on to the genre. Then people get nitpicky, especially if no one finds the footage. I had to note in my review of Into The Storm that just because it was camera, doesn’t mean that it was found footage, but hey, people still raged.

For what it is worth, it looks like As Above, So Below night be a found footage standard horror film too. Found Footage films that are true to the word are annoying, because they usually mean no survivors. Knowing there is no survivors can be annoying. Back in the day, lots of people survived horror films. More and more recently they seem to want to make it one or no survivors.

Oh well. Hopefully based on the setting it is at least full of history?

And hopefully this is the biggest hole in the movie.

I guess it is based on history. History…and magic!

Scarlett (Perdita Weeks) is a young archaeologist and scholar, with several degrees. More than one would expect for someone so young. Her father helped pick out her career path and was big in the field. However, some say he went mad trying to discover the true location of the Philosopher’s Stone. That’s right. They want immortality.

Well, after going to Iran and finding out some Rosetta Stone like artifact that would allow her to decipher a code, she heads back to Paris where the one and only Nicolas Flamel died. Rumor has it that Flamel achieved immortality by being a cool alchemist and discovering the Philosopher’s Stone, which also made him super rich! And since then people have wanted to find him or find the stone to get some of that wealth action.

Scarlett isn’t doing it for money. She is doing it for science. Along with Benji (Edwin Hodge), a man who wants to make a documentary on the search, and her good friend George (Ben Feldman) (who can also translate some stuff for her), they are going to scour Paris looking for it!

But, below Paris? That means the Catacombs! Which have only been partially explored still. It is really easy to get lost down there and lose track of where you are going. Would be scary without a guide to get them to where they need to go. Like Papillon (François Civil) and his two friends (Ali Marhyar, Marion Lambert)! They know those catacombs and the superstitions behind them.

Pro Tip 3: Crawling on bones is probably not bad luck.

For what it is worth, only parts of this movie could be considered found footage. Multiple cameras and people with cameras dying, you are going to have cameras being left behind. So technically someone can find those.

I also thought at times things were pretty scary. Based on the score and framing you can tell when something spooky was about to jump at you, so I might have looked far to the side of the theater, or behind me to make sure no one was about to jump on me in real life. Going to a theater in the slums that is a real fear.

Also, at times the movie felt a bit intelligent. They were doing a lot of smart things, which is good because the two main leads are supposed to be smart characters. So that is nice. A lot of leaps of logic by the end though.

As Above, So Below was a strange movie. It was interesting in that it was unique and felt more like a thriller early on. I had some scares. By the end it was pretty dang crazy and felt harder to follow. Everything they were doing made sense, sure, but as to why it made sense is the bigger question.

Overall, a good use of the “found footage” and an okay movie.

“Give me a random foreign movie!” I shouted at the Netflix, not fully understanding how technology worked.

Four hours later, when the program still did nothing, I decided to just search and find one on my own. And thus, a review of The Angels’ Share was born!

This one from Scotland. Sure, not really super foreign, in that they are technically speaking English, but I definitely had to turn on the subtitles to fully understand some of these characters.

Get it? Kilts! Foreign movies! A-ha-ha!

Community service seems to be the punishment of choice in Scotland. I can say that, because the beginning of the story introduces us to several different people all receiving several hundred hours of community service for various crimes they have committed and none of them get jail time! Including our…uhh, main character Robbie (Paul Brannigan). Except Robbie maybe should have deserved jail time, for beating up a complete stranger. But his wife Leonie (Siobhan Reilly) is about to give birth, and somehow they argued that his life is undergoing changes and he should be there for the newborn.

Well, Robbie is caught up in a family feud / gang war type of situation. He grew up in a violent world and cannot escape it. Hell, Leonie’s family beat him up when he went to visit his new son, just because of all the trouble he had caused.

But some people give him hope. Like Harry (John Henshaw) their volunteer foreman guy, who helps him out, and tries to reward the crew with good work done, like taking them to a distillery. They soon find out Robbie has a nose for different beverages and a good judge of taste and quality. A very useless talent mostly.

However, maybe alcohol can be the answer to all of his problems? Maybe he can get a real job in the industry? Well, that won’t help too much, because he also has to get out of the area or else he will always be caught up in this violence?

So what is Robbie to do? He needs money fast. So when news of a very rare cask is going up for action, will he succumb to the high monetary gain should he steal it, in order to start his life anew? Or will he, you know, not. Also starring Jasmin Riggins, Gary Maitland, and William Ruane as his community service companions.

Ah, so bottles are under their kilts. Now it all makes sense.

Seriously, how can these people understand each other? Some characters are just so Scottish. Reminded me of Brad Pitt‘s character on Snatch, nationalities aside.

I will say that after watching it, I am a bit disappointed by the level of comedy in this comedy/drama. My hopes were raised pretty high because the first scene had me almost cackling. But then the humor after it was few and far between. It gave me false expectations so early in the movie, I was left with a sour taste in my mouth.

The entire middle felt pretty slow. The ending was interesting however, but not a lot happened at that point.

So, overall, disappointed with the comedy, but the drama had some interesting moments. Because it is Scottish and there is anger, there are some pretty sweet curses thrown about, reminding Americans that our curses are shit in comparison.

I guess it is okay. Not really something I’d watch again after a viewing, but it was a decent way to past the time. Maybe next time I yell at Netflix, it will find me a movie faster.

“What in the fuck is this?” You might all be asking yourselves. “You said you don’t do older movies! You lied to us! We trusted you!” Stop talking in unison readers, that is creepy.

This is a special occasion, much like my Milestone Reviews. I am taking part in a Blog-A-Thon with the theme of 1984. Here is a banner I am supposed to use. .

So yeah, a week long blog-a-thon of only movies from 1984, and I picked C.H.U.D. because I am a winner at heart. C.H.U.D. is a movie I had never seen before, but definitely something I had heard a lot before. The first I heard about it was the summer of 2006. That is when Clerks II came out in theaters, I had to drive an hour with my brother to go see it, and we went at the first possible show time at like, 10 am. We were excited. One line stuck out to me as peculiar that they uttered twice. “Hideous Fucking C.H.U.D.”

I didn’t know what a C.H.U.D. was, but I liked it, and began saying it a lot. I obviously looked into it eventually, started seeing the references in tons of other pop culture things and swore one day I would watch it. Like. Seven years ago. Thankfully, the 1984 Blog-A-Thon happened, and I finally had an outlet for my dreams.

Speaking of dreamy.

New York City. Land of the homeless, large sewer systems, subways, and C.H.U.D.s. What is a C.H.U.D.? Good question. It just might stand for Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dweller. You’d be hard pressed to find a better acronym than that one.

No one sees them either, as they only come out of the sewers at night and bring their prey with them. However, there has been an unusual number of reported missing people cases lately. And police captain Bosch (Christopher Curry) is being told to cover it up. Don’t assume murder, just regular missing people running away. Well, he doesn’t really want to anymore. The numbers are getting too large and he has personal stake in it. His wife went missing too.

When he begins to investigate, a soup kitchen owner, A.J. ‘The Reverend’ Shepherd (Daniel Stern) has also noted that the homeless population has been dwindling, including several patrons he knew who slept underground. In fact, some of them are very scared, resorting to stealing weapons from police to fend for their lives. The Reverand is also a former nuclear physicist, or something. That should be noted, because that is awesome.

On the other side of the street, we have George Cooper (John Heard), a famous photographer who took pictures of the homeless in the sewers before and needs new material. His model girlfriend (Kim Greist) and him also get caught up in this C.H.U.D. nonsense, and it will take all four of them working together to stop the madness, find the root of the problem, and prevent the town from being blown up.

Oh hey, John Goodman is in here too as an unnamed cop. That seems relevant.

Speaking of dreamy…again.

Oh man, B-movies! I almost forgot you existed. After all, in modern times, there really isn’t too many B-movies left.

There is the bullshit that SyFy and The Asylum produce, but I would qualify them as C-Movies. They are intentionally made shitty, and are in fact, too shitty. No passion, no heart, just shit does not necessarily make a good time. Sharknado is terrible. The better B-Movies are the ones that were serious about what they were doing but ended up being shitty and amusing, not realizing that they have become a joke. The fact that C.H.U.D. had script controversy between the two male leads and rewrites means that these people wanted to make a real horror drama film.

But special effects. So bad.

While watching it, I did find myself laughing on more than one occasion. The shittyness of the 80s was fully rampart in this film. But at the same time, it had a decent plot. Corrupt government officials, nuclear waste scares, gray area between right and wrong. It wasn’t badly written. Just the make up.

This may be Daniel Stern’s best role after Home Alone (sorry Bushwhacked/Celtic Pride). Was it worth my time? Arguably. I feel better about using the term C.H.U.D. now, so I got that going for me.

It is currently on Netflix, so if you have a spare afternoon, why not?

Vampire movies.

A pretty popular subject subgenre of film, most of them all showing vampires in a different light than the accepted myths. Yes. Twilight is basically to blame for these last 8 or so years. I mean, shit, we even have a Dracula movie coming out later this year, about the “True legend” of Dracula. A misunderstood villain movie! How original. How different.

Then we had Byzantium, a very serious different vampire movie that was praised and I just kind of…could never get in to it. This is all important lead up to say that for Only Lovers Left Alive, I know it is another serious vampire movie. One about love. And I am just afraid I won’t be able to get into this one either.

Which is why it took me about or month or more to watch it!

Maybe I am just afraid I can’t experience true pain, like this clearly emotional vampire here is feeling.

Adam (Tom Hiddleston) has been around for a long time. He is so bored with it all, with humanity (Which he refers to as Zombies), that he has turned into a stay at home recluse. In order to not be bothered, he moved to the most decrepit and abandoned by society place he could find, Detroit, Michigan, to live out his lonely existence. And make music.

His only contact with others is a young rocker lackie, Ian (Anton Yelchin), who gets him things during the day for fat cash and has a clause to not tell people of his whereabouts, and a doctor (Jeffrey Wright), who he visits at night to buy blood from, no questions asked.

And just when he is thinking about ending it all, his wife calls him. Eve (Tilda Swinton) has been living in Tangier. They are still in love, just spending hundreds of years with a person can be a lot. So they do their own travels and discovery a lot. Either way, he convinces her to travel to him, so they can be in love and reminisce and relive the glory days.

But with Eve, her sister Ava (Mia Wasikowska) eventually shows up. She is immature and bad news and what leads to just the beginning of Adam and Eve’s problems.

Also, John Hurt is in here as another, much older vampire, that is a spiritual adviser to Eve.

Ever wonder why one of the blood types is O? Stands for Orgasmic.

My biggest fear was…essentially reached.

Only Lovers Left Alive is not really a bad movie, it is just another movie that I had to struggle to really get in to. It is definitely a slow feeling movie, probably because for people with eternal lifespans, time tends to not be super important.

Only Lovers Left Alive is also a really well acted movie. Both Swinton and Hiddleston are fantastic. They had to convey a lot of their emotions through their actions and it showed. But time and time again has shown me that a well acted movie does not necessarily make a great film. Also, shout out to Yelchin, who I had no idea was playing the rock groupie.

The movie tells a decent story, that is for sure. The pacing just kills me at times, which of course also factors into the entire length of the story. Based on the actual plot points of the film, I wouldn’t expect it to be two hours long. But it lingers.

Does it have to? Does it have to let it linger? Not in my mind, but then I think I am a minority here.

Not a completely unique take on Vampires, as a lot of the traits are still there, but a decent adaptation of them in a modern shitty world society.

When choosing my documentary to watch for this week, it was between The Revisionaries and Shenandoah. The reason The Revisionaries won out is because it is a lot more relevant to my current life, as someone who now lives in Texas and is responsible for school aged children.

Shenandoah, your time will come, don’t you worry.

It is almost common knowledge at this point that the Texas Board of Education has a lot more power than any sort of Board of Education should have. Because there are shit ton of people in Texas (And California), the standards that these boards set mean the books they chose will make a lot of money. They order more than they need to, so whatever the book is picked will make tons of money. So books try to make sure the standards chosen are met, so they can make that sweet cash money. If all textbooks try to meet their standards, then that means the rest of the country is affected by their decision. Ain’t no one making a textbook based on the Montana Board of Education.

It turns out one of these states is very liberal and the other is very conservative. So, what should be a not too important Board of Education becomes a battleground for different ideologies to lead the youth towards different values.

And this is seemingly public enemy #1.

Pictured above is one Don McLeroy of which a majority of the documentary is about. During the stupidly controversial evolution v creationism debate, he lead the board and was appropriately scrutinized. Thankfully logic won out, for the most part the science community won and Don was sent back to being a regular board member, not the head.

But the battle wasn’t over. It turns out Social Studies was a much more important subject to look at that didn’t get as much media exposure. This is where they determine what important parts of history are taught and what is left out. This of course can lead to a lot of bad things should it go unchecked. And well, to figure out who won that battle, you might want to see the documentary.

I thought it did a decent job of bringing this topic to light, but something was missing for me. Hard to really pin point it. Maybe the general boringness of the whole documentary? Having already knew about these facts, I didn’t find it really too eye opening or surprising. Just had me shaking my head on more than one occasion.

Decent info, some interesting characters, and a nice jab at Liberty University, which is always nice. But I just wanted more.

Ah, a third movie. The Expendables 3 was rocked with “controversy” a few weeks before its release by having an actual good copy of it released on the internet. DVD or better scan, all the effects in, everything. Not a shitty cam copy. Well, in a day it had over 100,000 downloads, and by now over a million I am certain. They say that the video was stolen or whatever and you know what? I don’t believe it.

There was a lot of negative press on this film because now that there are even more stars in it than before, it is now rated PG-13. The other two films (1 and 2 here) were rated R! That is how an action movie should be! But this one was certain to fail because no one wanted to see a big action movie with lots of stars with toned down action.

So yeah, I think they leaked it themselves and will now blame that leak on bad ticket sales, and only like one person will lose their job.

But at least they are classing it up for this third installment.

The Expendables. Lead by Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone) still, they are making their current mission to free Doctor Death (Wesley Snipes) from confinement. He was an original expendable, but they eventually locked him up for tax evasion. That is a real life joke right there. But after the mission they use him to do another mission and that is where they find out that Conrad Stonebanks (Mel Gibson) is free and out to kill.

Conrad was another original Expendables, but he is a lot crazier and lot more mad at the former members of the groups. So he wants to kill em all. Simple as that. After injuring one of the current crew, Barney vows that he will get him back and make him pay. So he sends away his crew (Jason Statham, Randy Couture, Dolph Lundgren, Terry Crews) because he doesn’t want them to get hurt. Instead he decides to get a bunch of fresh new guys and get them hurt instead!

So he gets his guy who knows guys, Kelsey Grammer, gets his team of noobies (Glen Powell, Victor Ortiz, Ronda Rousey, Kellan Lutz) to get Conrad! Yeah!

Also starring Harrison Ford as the CIA guy who also wants to take down Conrad, and Antonio Banderas as a former special ops type guy, but is getting older and no one likes him. Also of course, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jet Li are just hanging around too.

Mel Gibson? Playing a bad guy? That doesn’t fit in with my world view at all.

By far, The Expendables trilogy has to be the most mediocre trilogy I have reviewed on my website. 2 out of 4’s across the board. They don’t even hold equal 2 out of 4s either. The second one is the best, the first one is the worst, and this one is somewhere in between. A lot of the action early on felt shitty, so let’s blame that on the rating.

The first one didn’t know how to be entertaining. This one really didn’t have huge entertaining moments either, outside of the fact that Antonio Banderas was a-freaking-mazing. His character was hilarious and brought a lot of fun to the movie. Without him, it would seriously be a 1 out of 4 dud.

Because lets look at the new guys? Who the fuck are these people? Two of them are just MMA fighters, not action stars. Lutz is the only one who actually has been in technically action movies.

Isn’t that the point of these movies? To bring in action stars together? Gibson was great as a villain. Snipes was underused. Crews, normally the best part, was even more underused, so that was disappointing.

The action was whatever too.

Easily a passable movie, and technically a passable franchise.

Let’s Be Cops. A movie that has been advertised for almost six months before coming out, despite for all intents and purposes, looking like a shitty cop comedy.

I mean. You saw the trailer. It just pumps loud rap music at you with scenes that aren’t really funny and situations that are so unbelievable that you glare. Well, maybe I am just talking from my experience.

But from the looks of it, it just looks like a collection of people from TV shows trying to get into a big movie. I also missed three different screenings before finally going to the fourth available one because of how little I cared.

This is clearly just a recreation of a scene from Tommy Boy.

Justin (Damon Wayans Jr.) has a dream job, a video game maker in L.A. And by that, he works at a company but no one cares about his opinion or his game, especially not his boss (Jonathan Lajoie), and he kind of gets shit on. Non literally. He lives with his best friend, Ryan (Jake Johnson), who played college football but didn’t go pro due to an injury. He has been living off of money he made from a commercial for a few years, no prospects. Life sucks for them.

It sucks even more when they go to a reunion party and everyone there is successful and they are losers. They also showed up wearing cop outfits thinking it was a costume party. But hey, it turns out regular people believe them to be actual cops, since their outfits are authentic. They get to boss people around and have fun. Shit, even the ladies like them.

Well, Ryan gets really into this idea. He is the bigger loser. He gets the used cop car. Lights. Super illegal. Justin hates the idea. He has a job. Doesn’t like it. But likes the perks of the cute girl Josie (Nina Dobrev) at the diner they frequent finally paying attention to him.

But things quickly get out of hand when they end up pissing off a local mob crime dude, Mossi (James D’Arcy), who thinks a few actual street cops are trying to clean up the turf. They can’t handle this shit. They don’t even have real guns!

Also there are roles for Rob Riggle, Keegan-Michael Key, Andy Garcia, Natasha Leggero and Joshua Ormond as Little Joey.

Don’t give me that disgusted look just because there is a kid in this movie. There are dozens of them!

As expected, a lot of the humor in this film is crude and I didn’t find a lot of it funny. But then, every once in awhile, something made me chuckle. Generally they came from Damon Wayans Jr., who has been making me laugh for years. He just has those dance moves, you know?

The moments that I actually found amusing were apparently enough to warrant the film into okay status. On top of that, James D’Arcy made a pretty interesting mob boss. Classic eye scar and all.

It still had quite a few annoying plot points, especially near the end, that cause characters to react only in ways to save our stars / make the movie move forward, instead of what their character would actually do. Like, you know, shoot someone.

Whatever happens, this movie definitely doesn’t deserve a sequel. So I do hope it fails enough financially for them to not even think about it. Watch on Netflix eventually, maybe.

I have been waiting years to review this movie. Years! Because as you probably already know, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has been in production hell for years.

It all goes to the time before time, 2010, when Nickelodeon had the rights for TMNT and announced that a Michael Bay company would be in charge, with Bay as a producer. This scared a lot of people.

But nothing was to prepare the fans for March 2012. That is when it was presented that the movie would actually be called just Ninja Turtles and was setting out to change at least half of their origin story. One major point was of course making them Aliens from some Turtle planet. Shredder was also a government agent / alien that could grow blades from his body and a lot of the turtle personality traits were switched around and changed, seemingly unnecessarily.

Fans raged, internet was set on fire, former voice actors wrote nasty letters to Bay and needless to say, production was slowed and delayed. The release of this movie was kept getting pushed back, and that’s why it took almost six years after securing the rights for this movie to be released for the public.

A movie, for all intents and purposes, that should have been pretty easy to churn out.

Just like it should have been pretty easy to act out fainting, one would think.

Thankfully, the story takes place in modern NYC. There is a small gang war happening, where The Foot Clan is running amuck in the town, stealing shit, taking prisoners, being assholes. Basically a giant terrorist organization in NYC and for whatever reason just the local police force is doing something about it.

That and four mutated turtles in their teenage phase who have been trained as ninjas, that is. Leonardo (Pete Ploszek), the leader and Katana user, Donatello (Jeremy Howard), the smart one and Bo Staff wielder, Michelangelo (Noel Fisher), the joker/lover with the Dual Nunchaku, and of course Raphael (Alan Ritchson), the lone wolf and bad-ass with the Sai.

They are attempting to stop the Foot Clan in secret, after being trained by their Sensei Splinter (Danny Woodburn), an Adult Mutant Ninja Rat. And they would have been kept in secret too if it wasn’t for that troubling news reporter April O’Neal (Megan Fox) and her desire to get out of fluff news reporting. She discovers them and gets caught up much deeper into the war than she had wanted, especially since she knows no one will believe her. Not her boss (Whoopi Goldberg) or her camera man (Will Arnett, definitely not playing Casey Jones).

Also featuring non-science science, with a lab company lead by Eric Sachs (William Fichtner) who has a hand in the turtle creation without realizing it. Also featuring Johnny Knoxville and Tony Shalhoub as the voices of Leonardo and Splinter. What? Yes. For whatever reason, those two characters had different voice actors than the people playing them for real. Kind of odd.

Speaking of odd, The Shredder. I have no fucking clue who played him or who voiced him, if they are two different people. The internet seems to be void of that information despite being the big bad villain and all, and in the movie quite a fucking bit.

This face was made by Donatello when he couldn’t find out who was playing Shredder. Not knowing things hurts.

Again, thank goodness the internet rose up and demanded a better film. The turtles themselves are pretty loyal to the source material. Each turtle has his established personality traits and they all shine through nicely. As a team, they also seem to work really well together. Their chemistry was good and one of the better parts in the movie.

In fact, there are quite a few amusing/funny scenes scattered throughout. One “rap” scene in particular was well done (and no, not the Ninja Rap redone or whatever, that is just some bullshit credits thing). I also enjoyed a lot a mini-monologue by Raphael near the end. In terms of fight scenes, the most fleshed out fight scene is the going down the snow mountain one, which has a lot going on. All the fights before that are too dark and shadowy or feature too many quick changes. The final fight scene, with one cool moment, kind of just felt like how I play Soul Calibur. Since no one will get that joke, I ring out people like crazy.

Shredder was mostly in his ridiculous armor and never really showed off his actual skills, so that was annoying. I am mixed on whether or not I liked Splinter. Definitely unique.

A lot of fans are going to find the changes to the origin annoying, I predict. I am fine with the change, even though I like the original because then they can reference Dare Devil more. But it is fine.

Oh yeah. Fox? Not terrible, not great. Disappointed in Arnett’s role. He has a look for a guy that could be Casey Jones if he had longer hair, he just…is annoying in this one. I more or less hate how they look. Going for realism kind of make them just look gross. See the Donatello picture above.

Passable, okay, and maybe eventually forgettable.

Hooray! Another fifty reviews later, I am ready to introduce my next Milstone Review: number 1150 for my website!

Holy crap. If I thought 1050 was a shitty milestone, 1150 has to be way worse. But hey, fun reviews are fun.

Today I decided to look at Speed Racer, which I didn’t see when it came out six years ago due to all the hate I heard about it. I didn’t have the means or willpower to watch every movie six years ago, so I let the internet decide for me.

I also never really watched the Speed Racer cartoon growing up. I knew of the references, and by golly, I knew how to make fun of the anime style when it came up in conversations, but that is all I had going for me. So in a way, this is probably good, as I won’t have anything to compare it to.

I really only know one thing about the movie: COLOR!

This is the level of celebration I demand for hitting milestone 1150.

America is all about speed. Hot, nasty, bad-ass speed.

So it is pretty obvious that Speed Racer (Emile Hirsch) would grow up wanting to race. Also because of his name. Also because of the family business. The dad Pops (John Goodman) runs a small auto shop to make race cars, and his older brother, Rex Racer (Scott Porter) is a professional racer!

He also has a mom (Susan Sarandon) and a younger brother Spritle (Paulie Litt) and the Chim Chim the monkey.

This is a clear example where nurture trumps nature.

The unfortunate thing is that Rex decided to leave home and join another company and not support his family anymore. And soon after, despite being one of the best, he started being a really dirty player, causing other players to get pushed off the tracks and maybe even…cheating! But then he died in a crash before charges could be pushed on him, bringing dishonor to the racer family.

Well, speed? Speed wants to win that honor. And boy howdy, can he fly. He almost beats his brother’s record on a local track, but holds off at the end to honor his brother. He knows he wasn’t a cheater. Now he is getting job offers, but he knows he wants to stay with his family and race on his own terms.

Where will you be when the Speed [Racer] kicks in?

Enter Mr. Royalton (Roger Allam)! Owner of a super large mega corporation, he has more money than there exists more or less, and he also likes to sponsor racers. His ideas are simple. Keep what works working, team chemistry, pit crews, whatever. He just wants to help out, help train and give lots of money.

Well, it turns out that Speed, after thinking about it, would rather stay with his family. He doesn’t want to hurt them like they were hurt before. He wants to do it the right way. On his own, with his Pops.

Mr. Royalton doesn’t like being turned down. Not by some punk asshat with the last name of Racer. The racing leagues in this world have been controlled by corporate interests for many decades now. Every race is fixed. Every race. Even that one. And that one. Speed doesn’t believe it, won’t believe it. Royalton tells Speed he will have his car crashed on the next race, and family sued for infringement. False claims, but bad news travels fast, so his families business will be in ruins.

They might have to eat the fatty with the monkey to get by.

Well shit, what is a Speed to do? Try to take down the mega-corporations? Sure!

Inspector Detector (Benno Furmann), head of the corporate crimes division. Racer Taejo Togokahn (Rain) has evidence to bring down Royalton, but needs help racing in a team event soon. He has enlisted the mysterious Racer X (Matthew Fox) also unassigned, and they need a third. If they can help them win, they can get out of Royalton’s hold and he’d help put a stop to the shenanigans.

Speed decides to not tell his family about it either. Just his girlfriend, Trixie (Christina Ricci), so she can be the entire pit crew and help them out with helicopter support.

Yeah. That’s the reason to bring her. Sure.

The multi nation race takes several days, so of course his family finds out and shows up for support. Which is great, because people are now getting sent to literally just kill him off the tracks, in his hotel room, elsewhere, they just want him dead. But now Speed has people to protect him! Hell, even Sparky (Kick Gurry) is there, the main pit crew guy who works for his dad, and the guy that has taken me this long to find a place to casually fit his mention in this review.

Needless to say, the good guys don’t get stabbed or shot, and the three win the race! Now they can take down the Royalton Corp!

Hah, just fucking kidding you there too. Taejo was just playing them too. Now that his corp won this big race, their stock is super high, and that is all they cared about. They didn’t have illegal information on Royalton. Suck it, Speed and X!

This of course pisses Speed off and he even takes it out on X who he thinks is his brother in disguise. Nope, just that guy from Lost. Shit.

“We’ve got to go back!…to the finish line! Because that’s how races work!”

Thankfully not everyone in the Togokahn family/corporation is a complete dick. Taejo’s sister Horuko (Nan Yu) steals the invitation to the Grand Prix from her brother and gives it to Speed. With it, can still enter the best of the best races. If he takes first, he will ruin Royalton financially and prove that they can beat the system where racing is supposedly fixed. It would be sweet if they could also some how prove that Royalton cheats. But let’s not get too crazy.

Somehow his family is able to make a new car from scratch in about 32 hours before the race, and Speed is then able to go and drive! Yay!

Well, lot of people come at him, he avoids a lot of them. Royalton cheats, he is able to break free from the cheat and also expose the cheat to the public at the same time.

Speed wins the race, and everyone goes home happy or to jail sad. Wooo, EAT IT CORPORATIONS!

But between all that plot was about five minutes straight of color and color on color.

Did Speed Racer GoGoGo? Maybe, in a way.

The CGI style was very hectic and it everything was constantly changing or talking. Characters flying across the screen, many transistions, and many many colors.

I am glad I watched it in Blu-Ray, but I wish there was a good 3D component as well to go with it. I feel like everything would have popped. It would have been like 135 minutes on LCD, I have been told.

A bit surprised by the complicatedness of the plot and the time they dedicate to setting up events in this film, given its PG nature. It seems like it would be very hard for kids to follow. Mostly because it was hard for myself to follow.

In terms of entertainment purposes, the biggest problem might be the large and complicated plot. It seems like the movie is trying to be two things, a big entertaining race spectacle that is colorful and full of wonder, and a corporate serious drama film. What I am left with is a long movie that goes to lengths to include both sides and I get a bit of a confusing mess. It isn’t that it is hard to keep up with, but in its already unique and eye popping style, it is easy to feel overwhelmed.

Also better acting could have helped.

I don’t know if this is the movie Speed Racer fans deserved, but it is probably the film they needed right now. It is overall okay, but one I would rather watch 90 minutes of instead of 135 minutes.

But they did announce that Speed Racer would appear in Fast & Furious 7, so that should be fun shenanigan wise.