Speed Racer
Warner Bros. Pictures | Release Date: May 9, 2008 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
37
METASCORE
Generally unfavorable reviews based on 37 Critic Reviews
Positive:
8
Mixed:
14
Negative:
15
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
38
Charlotte ObserverLawrence Toppman
Speed Racer is chaotic as a six-ring circus, gaudy as a transvestites convention and soullessly cute as a robot puppy. Read full review
38
USA TodayClaudia Puig
Yes, it's a candy-colored Day-Glo world, but there's a liveliness missing from this lead-footed Speed Racer. Read full review
30
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
Gaudier than a Hindu-temple roof, louder than the Las Vegas night, Speed Racer is a cathedral of glitz. Read full review
30
Austin ChronicleMarc Savlov
There's more story, heart, and – cutting to the chase, the quick, and the dead – pure, unadulterated fun contained within a scant five minutes of Rockstar Games' new Grand Theft Auto IV video game than there is in the whole of Speed Racer. Read full review
30
Washington PostAnn Hornaday
Chances are, after they've passed the two-hour mark, viewers will share the same collective, if unspoken, wish: Go, Speed Racer. Go. Read full review
30
The New York TimesA.O. Scott
This movie sets out to honor and refresh a youthful enthusiasm from the past and winds up smothering the fun in self-conscious grandiosity. Read full review
30
Chicago ReaderAndrea Gronvall
Andy and Larry Wachowski barrel through this adaptation of the 60s animated series, hoping perhaps that no one will notice the story is as flat as roadkill. Read full review
30
Los Angeles TimesCarina Chocano
The fakeness of it all overwhelms, dampening any real excitement. It's hard to care about characters so stiff and one-dimensional they out-cartoon the cartoon originals, and it's hard to watch them bop around like avatars in a flat, airless, digital world. Read full review
30
SlateDana Stevens
The state of mind brought on by Speed Racer the movie is more akin to that phenomenon by which young infants, exposed to more stimuli than their systems are equipped to handle, will simply shut down. Read full review
25
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
Such a dull, clunky, joyless mess, it's hard to believe the people who made it understand much about movies. Read full review
20
New York Magazine (Vulture)David Edelstein
Orgy, hell: The film is like a nightmare in which you're trapped in an arcade with screens on all sides and no eyelids. Based on an elemental but happily streamlined Japanese cartoon (an anime precursor), it's an eyesore, a shambles, with incoherent action and ear-buckling dialogue. Read full review
20
The New YorkerAnthony Lane
Though the film is not as criminally poor as "V for Vendetta," which the Wachowskis wrote in 2005, it struck me as more insidious. Read full review
12
New York PostKyle Smith
This adventurously awful film is awful in many ways at once. Read full review
0
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
This toxic admixture of computer-generated frenzy and live-action torpor succeeds in being, almost simultaneously, genuinely painful -- the esthetic equivalent of needles in eyeballs -- and weirdly benumbing, like eye candy laced with lidocaine. Read full review
0
SalonStephanie Zacharek
This isn't a picture filled with wonder and a sense of fun; it's so jaded and crass that I almost wonder if it's a highly unscientific experiment designed to gauge how little audiences will settle for these days. Manic and multicolored, Speed Racer is an excess of nothingness. Read full review
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