Speed Racer has been in development since 1992 and went through a number of hands. Ultimately it ended up with the Wachowski Brothers (Matrix trilogy). They elected to go heavy on the action and the CG, which isn’t a totally bad call, and they stuck to the elements of Speed’s history.

I have to admit, I took my 10-year-old and he had a blast with the movie. And there were times that I was totally conscious of the theme music playing in the background that lulled me into forgiving what I was watching.

I honestly don’t know that anyone could have made the movie that I think I would have wanted to see. The original cartoon run gave the fans pretty much everything we needed, and the people new to the franchise just didn’t get enough in this movie to buy in.

The CG stuff was awesome at times. I mean, I believed cars could jump and flip and race up mountains (okay, the Batmobile kind of broke ground for that). But when the racing sections cropped up along the tracks, I have to admit to being lost most of the time. I just couldn’t tell what was going on. The driving technique seemed to hover somewhere between stunt driving, racing, and drifting. I thought the protective “balls” that covered the drivers during the event of an explosion was cool and a lot of fun, but there just wasn’t enough scenes like that to win me over.

Speed Racer is a fun film if you have a child or can be a child for a little while. But it’s a snack at best, and not a meal that will stick with you and give you much to talk about later. A word of caution, though. The language can be surprisingly a bit harsh at times, which caught me offguard. My son even commented on it afterward because he didn't know why they added it to the live-action version.