Discuss: Does 'Speed Racer' Miss the Mark With Kids?
Filed under: Fandom, Exhibition, Movie Marketing
There's been much buzzing around the Cinematical virtual office over the past few days about Speed Racer. James pretty much liked it (for a kids' movie), Scott pretty much hated it, and Eugene seems, well, a bit disappointed. We just got back from taking the crew to see Speed Racer.
Last week at the same time, we were at Iron Man, and the theater was almost completely packed, with only front row seats left by the time the previews started. This week, same time, exact same theater, even, and there were maybe 20 people total. And I have to say, if the Wachowskis are aiming for the kiddie market with this film, as many seem to think, I think they've largely missed their mark. Aside from the largely empty matinee theater, there were a couple of signs during the screening that this movie wasn't playing well to the kiddie set.
For one thing, with a running time of over two hours, the film is just way too long to hold the attention of kids, especially through the largely inane and boring dialog. My own attention was wandering less than half an hour in; by the 2/3 mark of the film, my kids -- who last week were utterly and completely enraptured by Iron Man from start to finish -- were wiggling, shifting in their seats, and asking for frequent potty breaks. Never a good sign. They dug the race scenes, mostly, but almost every time the talking started, so did the wiggling and looking away from the screen. The most engaged they were for the entire thing, actually, was during the scenes of the monkey over the closing credits -- then they got up and danced to the theme song. And it wasn't just my kids; there was lots of fidgeting going on throughout the theater, from adults and kids alike.
I asked my kids what they thought of the movie and how it compared to Iron Man after they'd had a chance to digest it. Their verdict? It was okay, mostly fun, but way too long, way too much talking, not enough cool racing -- and Iron Man was way cooler. The main thing they cared about with Speed Racer was: when is the video game of it coming out? And that's pretty much what the movie felt like to me, too -- a two-hour advertisement for a cool video game -- made by people dropping many, many hits of acid with espresso-shot chasers.
So ... what did your kids think of Speed Racer? And if they also saw Iron Man, which did they like better?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
5-10-2008 @ 6:00PM
Paul Kulik said...
Haven't had the pleasure of seeing Speed Racer yet...but, at a matinee of IRONMAN, my grandsons ( 8 and 6 years old ) limited themselves to one potty break and were back in their seats in a few minutes. I guess I'll take them again because we neglected to stay until after the credits. I will also take my 35 year old son along as a birthday present , to give him a superhero fix, until Batman returns.
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5-10-2008 @ 6:38PM
Paul Kulik said...
Haven't had the pleasure of seeing Speed Racer yet...but, at a matinee of IRONMAN, my grandsons ( 8 and 6 years old ) limited themselves to one potty break and were back in their seats in a few minutes. I guess I'll take them again because we neglected to stay until after the credits. I will also take my 35 year old son along as a birthday present , to give him a superhero fix, until Batman returns.
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5-10-2008 @ 6:40PM
akaison said...
I asked this question yesterday of a friend- exactly how is this of interest to kids who didn't grow up seeing the cartoon. it's no pokemon or anything that they would have a reference for having seen.
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5-10-2008 @ 7:41PM
Se7en said...
Not sure how this whole "its for kids" thing started actually. Its obviously targeted at the same market every summer movie is aimed at: 18-35 year old males, and those who either remember Speed Racer as a kid, or remember loving the Matrix.
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5-10-2008 @ 8:14PM
tpo-yo! said...
It's funny- Mattel was heavily involved with the 'creative direction' for both this movie and Cars. Cars, depending on who you ask, was a success. That's why they have alot more input for Cars 2, than the Pixar people. And let's not forget about Toy Story 3. Damn you corporate synergy!
As problematic as this movie was, I appreciated the effort that everyone involved put into this disaster. Speed is (as it always was in cartoon form) now officially cult material.
Never a member, but was interested in how the movie would've turned out.
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5-10-2008 @ 9:13PM
tomtownend said...
I saw Speed Racer this morning with my 5yr old son. I saw Iron Man last night with my 28yr old brother.
Both films are large budget affairs released as studio summer 'tentpoles'. Beyond that I can't see any simple way to make any direct comparison between them as films. I enjoyed both but that's testament only to being able to enjoy a broad church of big budget FX laden films. As entertainment they're both as nourishing as a Happy Meal.
I have to concur with the general observation that young children are enthralled with the hyper kinetic race sequences in Speed Racer and rapidly lose attention during all other scenes. Personally I enjoyed the 'lulls' in proceedings and was impressed with how competently the film handled a rather charming portrait of family life. The reason this holds little interest for young children would be twofold in my opinion.
Firstly the structure of the narrative, whilst extremely fluent, is utterly beyond comprehension for nippers. In the first reel alone we're presented with a race occurring in the present, intercut with the personal histories of 5 characters up to that point, spanning a 10yr period, culminating in a literal 'ghost' of a deceased character appearing in the present day race sequence to illustrate both the potential for a racing lap record being broken and the state of mind of the chief protagonist. This is simply too sophisticated for children to follow.
Secondly the engine of the plot for the next two hours is the intrigue surrounding race fixing with the esoteric goal of the main antagonist being a bunch of stuff about inflating stock prices - the destruction of Speed Racer simply being a subsidiary of that goal. This would be fine if it was explored with one line of dialogue but the film makers seem intent on dramatising every mechanism of the antagonists quest. Which was fine by me - I enjoyed the fact that I was being humoured with a well thought out and balanced plot - but not since The Phantom Menace has a juvenile audience had to endure such unfamiliar and (in their minds at least) dull motivation.
It's a curates egg of a film which will perform below studio expectations at the box office. Which is a shame because it's a distinctive and well crafted entry into the 'action film' canon.
Iron Man is already a runaway box office success. Personally I thought it was a clever piece of sleight of hand. All the conventions and cliches of a summer super hero film dressed up with a witty script, superior visual FX and entertaining performances. It's all new spectacle but frankly nothing radically different than films that have gone before. It just happens to be the 2008 model.
And as my kid brother observed, 2 hours build up to a climax of two men duking it out in a car lot carries a mere fraction of the dramatic tension of many far more simple films.
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5-11-2008 @ 2:50AM
AJ Wiley said...
I don't know, I thought the Iron Man vs. Iron Monger climactic battle sequences were as exhilarating and visceral as any since Batman Begins'.
Nothing in Speed Racer was very exciting; it was amusing to an extent, but that was about it.
5-11-2008 @ 3:33AM
YouFaceTheTick said...
Batman Begins didn't have a climax. Like Iron Man, the film led up to nothing. Did Iron Man have a villain? yeah, a bald man in his 60s who wears camel hair coats and dockers...golly how intimidating.
5-10-2008 @ 9:32PM
Scott Weinberg said...
"Does 'Speed Racer' Miss the Mark With Kids?"
Yes, in every conceivable fashion.
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5-10-2008 @ 9:35PM
indecks said...
So it's finally out huh? Great! Can we now completely forget this incredibly poor looking movie? And maybe we can stop with the 4-news-posts-per-day regularity with this movie? That'd be great. The sooner it leaves theaters and leaves everyone's memory the better.
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5-11-2008 @ 7:19AM
Travis Tidmore said...
At least your not judging the movie without seeing it...oh wait.
5-10-2008 @ 9:55PM
Bob Loblaw said...
i just got back from an IMAX showing and everyone in the theater seemed to love it, adults and kids alike. people laughed at the jokes, there was minimal fidgeting, and applause and cheers could be heard when the credits rolled. i actually enjoyed it a whole lot more than Iron Man (i 100 percent agree with tomtownend and his Iron Man comments btw), and look forward to seeing it again. there's way too much hate for this summer popcorn movie. it entertains and excites and does it with a new and different visual style, and i admire it and the Wachowskis for that.
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5-11-2008 @ 1:28AM
Kevin said...
Finally, someone agrees with me. There was way more action and visuals in Speed Racer than Iron Man. Who the hell was Stane but a ripped off version of Iron Man? There was no real story but one big tease. I felt like I was watching a prequel for the next movie they expect us to see. But it's doubtful now that SR will see a sequel in the wake of this IRON MAN movie that was dry, tedious, and like something I've seen before. While intriguing to watch, it was simple, tedious, and not near as thrilling.
Speed has so much more in terms of plot, visual POP, cast, production design. direction, ingenuity, and the soundtrack by LOST's Micheal Giacchino!!!. I mean how much of Iron Man was CGI that Speed Racer wasn't. I felt like I was watching not a superhero, but some pompous rich ass, in a bad costume. Why do we have to wait for the sequel before anything cool happens. Iron Man hits the American soft spot with the Afghanistan theme, but that was a choice by the filmmakers, and not part of the canon. Changes were made in both films from the source material, but which one deserves the merit for breakthrough movie making? GEE ZUSs!
5-10-2008 @ 10:33PM
Leota said...
We went to the 7:40 showing Friday night. It was in a smaller theatre than Iron Man the weekend before, and it was only maybe 1/10 full when the show started. A few more people came in after that. There were two kids and a baby, the rest were early 20s and up.
The six year old we brought to Iron Man wanted to see Speed Racer too, but I don't know if his parents are going to take him, both of them really didn't want to watch it.
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5-10-2008 @ 10:50PM
zach said...
Iron man was so much better the action scenes were cool in both iron man and speed racer but at lesat in iron man the dialouge was interesting 2
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5-10-2008 @ 11:11PM
CK said...
I feel sorry for so many people who have prejudged the movie just because the think it a simplistic kid's show.
I took my kids to both Iron Man and Speed Racer. They are very different films but equally enjoyable. My wife and kids thought both films were fantastic.
So many critics of Speed Racer miss the point. It's a cartoon made into a CGI cartoon with live actors. Fantastic visuals and my kids kept up with the story.
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5-11-2008 @ 2:47AM
AJ Wiley said...
Well, I don't have kids, but I myself was bored by the scenes of long, rambling, exposition-y dialogue.
However, I actually thought the movie overall was kind of okay, but there are only three types of people who would dig it:
1. People with ADD.
2. People on LSD.
3. People who watched the cartoon as a kid.
I'm in that last category myself; definitely not old enough to have seen it when it first aired, but when I was five or six I'm pretty sure Cartoon Network or something showed it. I thought the movie was amusing in the way that it recreated the absolute kitsch and camp of the show, even though every damn scene with Spritle and Chim-Chim was almost unbearable.
Not bad, but not necessarily good either.
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5-11-2008 @ 5:35AM
Franklin said...
I downloaded and watched the first seven minutes that Warner Bros. put online. I'm sorry to say that it didn't make me want to watch the rest of the movie, even when it goes to DVD. I guess it's not for me. But I do appreciate Warner giving us this option of "try before you buy". Unfortunately for them, I'm not buying.
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5-11-2008 @ 7:24AM
Travis Tidmore said...
I actually enjoyed the movie. I was worried and actually thought about trading my ticket in to see Iron Man again, but it was worth seeing.
It was a beautiful movie, with amazing colors that popped off the screen. But I don't think it's a kids movie at all.
First it's over 2 hours as you said, which is too long for kids. 2nd there's too much bad language for kids movie (not a whole lot of cussing just too much for kids IMO).
3rd there was too much talking scenes, and the entire scene about corporations and takeovers was way over the head of any kids I know.
Personally I think if they cut out about 20 or 30 minutes of exposition it could have been a great movie, instead of just a good one.
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5-11-2008 @ 11:05AM
vinbot said...
My three-year-old and five-year-old were both quite bored by the whole thing. The racing scenes interested them, but not too much else.
They're too young for Iron Man, in my opinion, but I saw it, and I must say it was far better, albeit utterly predictable.
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