"...like being force-fed a Costco-size bag of your favorite candy. " C, Ty Burr, Boston Globe "...a manufactured widget, a packaged commodity that capitalizes on an anthropomorphized cartoon of Capitalist Evil in order to sell itself and its ancillary products." C-, Jim Emerson, Chicago Sun-Times

"You'll want fall asleep whenever long-winded evil businessman Royalton (Roger Allam) shows up, and eventually not even another tricked out CGI car will rouse you from your slumber." B-, Geoff Berkshire, Chicago Tribune

"Go, Speed Racer, go! Go find a story more worthy of your mind-blowing visuals!" C+, Matt Stevens, E! Online

"Young boys are the only suitable audience..." C, Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly

"A Saturday morning live-action cartoon with stellar visual effects but rudimentary story and characters." C, Kirk Honeycut, Hollywood Reporter

"This adventurously awful film is awful in many ways at once." D-, Kyle Smith, New York Post

"...winds up smothering the fun in self-conscious grandiosity." C-, A.O. Scott, New York Times

"What impresses with its 'wow!' factor early on becomes repetitive and headache-inducing later in the proceedings." C, James Berardinelli, ReelViews

"...if this action extravaganza represents the future of movies, it's going to be a sad, dead and awful future." C, Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle

"This one is a kiddie show all the way..." B-, William Arnold, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

"For a movie about velocity, the excitement factor is low and the races feel like a drag."C, Claudia Puig, USA Today

Yikes. I wonder what most of those grumps were expecting. I mean, this is Speed Racer. Speed Racer has been awful for forty years. I wouldn't have walked in looking for intense character development or a deep narrative arc. At least, not in any Speed Racer film true to the source material.

I'm not even a big Speed Racer fan, but I was able to appreciate the callouts to the original. The late-60s background characters (always dressed in berets and super tight shirts), the inclusion of so much of what made the show ridiculous (Chim-Chim, Snake Oiler, a car built to throw beehives), and the near-constant usage of the Speed Racer theme music. And it was interesting to see how the movie tries to make sense of the World of Speed Racer without sacrificing anything. Like, the guy's name is "Speed Racer" and that's not considered stupid. There's no easy saves there, like declaring "Speed" a nickname, or any kids at school making fun of him for it.

The history lesson showing how auto racing got to this F-Zero-esque point actually makes you think it could have happened that way with the right technology. Certainly early turn-of-the-century drivers were controlling very dangerous machines... what if modern racing maintained the same relative danger level? The key invention would be that bubbly gel stuff that automatically rescues drivers from death... once something like that shows up, all bets are off in terms of track design and vehicle enhancements.

Sure, I would have eliminated a couple of the more painful Spritle and Chim-Chim bits... and maybe a touch more racing scenes. But the clever use of flashbacks and flashforwards plus the overall visual appeal more than makes up for it. I will say that I have no need for a sequel, though. I'm happy with the story as told and see little reason to return.

Bit of a screwup on retail copy box though. The sticker on the front promises a digital copy for either Windows or Mac, even has system requirements for iTunes and everything. But then on the inside, the digital copy code sheet outright declares it will not work on Apple Computers or iPods. What kind of company makes digital downloads that do not work with friggin' iPods? Companies with their heads in the sand, for one. Companies who have been paid off by Microsoft, for another. I registered a complaint on the Warner Bros website and I expect to hear back absolutely nothing.

Clark has already seen it twice within a 24 hour period, and we'll probably watch it tomorrow as well. Bonus, now we are poised to scoop up any leftover Speed Racer toys on the cheap. Good fun.