I took Brent and one of his friends to Speed Racer last night. I liked it a lot. Originally, I figured that I owed the Wachowski brothers a look at the movie given how much I enjoyed the Matrix series. I even sprung for the iMAX version of the Movie at a cost of an extra four bucks per person.

I really liked the movie – I never got the feel that it was a video game. I felt the editing was outstanding and they almost never spent too much time on a SFX shot or fight scene. The neat thing was the strong character development and strong plot line – for me it felt as though the plot revealed itself nicely – just enough to keep you on the edge of your seat abut the *characters* – not about the SFX.

The plot layers many common themes – hidden identity, evil manipulative business types, the little guy fighting for truth, justice and the car racing way. There was romance – Trixie is very very pretty and well played – she is the perfect live Anime girl – her eyes are so big one wonders if it were special effects.

All the characters were well cast and while there was always a temptation to go over the top with the characters – they did not go over the top – to the extent when the evil businessman gives his expected speech – you want to listen to see *how* it will turn out so that evil and greed always triumph. Everything in the movie had a little tiny twist and additional layers to avoid the cliches that would have been so easy to fall in to.

In a sense, the Wachowski brothers know that great writing is the bedrock of film making and great editing is what brings it all together. For me – I was pleased with all aspects of this film.

I have a couple of nitpicks on editing and pacing – I thought that the rally sequences should have been edited a bit tighter – the fact that the good guys pretty much did the same thing to several sets of bad guys in the desert bit – this could have been shortened and focused. The two main fight scenes (in the hotel and at the pass) also felt a bit repetitive.

Some of the break through cool bits – I loved the parking scene and how the background turns to hearts – they do this several times where the background fades to some graphical representation of emotion or feeling – very cool. I particularly liked the graphics when you looked at the crowd from the wining podium at the end – it was like a form of new-age impressionist painting that captures the essence of something without fine detail. Instead of representing reality – they represent how we remember reality.

My overall rating is that it was worth the iMax price – I truly enjoyed it.