10 years since 'Speed Racer': Did it deserve its lousy review?

Carly Mallenbaum | USA TODAY

Go, Speed Racer?

Ten years after Lana and Lilly Wachowski's eye-popping Speed Racer debuted to less-than-glowing reviews (40% on Rotten Tomatoes), fans of the film are uniting on social media to share what was an unpopular opinion back in 2008: It's a masterpiece?

Yes, they're talking about that Speed Racer starring Emile Hirsch and inspired by the racing cartoon. The movie became a trending topic online Wednesday with movie lovers praising the film on Twitter.

For example, one fan tweeted, "America just didn’t deserve such a wholehearted, unironic, and earnest movie about a guy who drives really fast in cars."

Speed Racer is 10 years old today and America just didn’t deserve such a wholehearted, unironic, and earnest movie about a guy who drives really fast in cars.



It should be on Netflix, do yourself a favor and educate your heart & soul. Thank you — Lucas Furrer (@LMFurrer) May 10, 2018

Another said that "no one believed us" that the film was so good.

Apparently it’s the 10th anniversary of when my friends and I sat in a sparsely populated theater and had our faces melted by Speed Racer and then proceeded to rave about how it’s a masterpiece and for years no one believed us — Patrick Willems (@patrickhwillems) May 9, 2018

And many shared the sentiment that Speed Racer wasn't given the respect it deserved: It's a "slept on visual treat!"

Happy 10th Anniversary to this slept on visual treat! I know a lot of people didn’t like it, but I LOVED Speed Racer (2008). pic.twitter.com/OPEuLyoVvP — ShyGyle_ (@ShyGyle_) May 10, 2018

But in 2008, USA TODAY did not find much of a need for Speed. Here's former critic Claudia Puig's 1-and-a-half-star review of the film which had this headline: "Speed Racer limps around the track"

It may be a tricked-out ride, but Speed Racer is too long for kids to sit still and too frenetic for their parents. Maybe teens and twenty-somethings will pick up the slack. For a movie about velocity, the excitement factor is low and the races feel like a drag. Perhaps that has a lot to do with its length: 2 hours and 15 minutes, which is at least a half-hour too long for a movie based on a cartoon. Or maybe it's the predictable story about a guy who goes up against crooked corporate sponsors. Racer can look vibrant with its blend of live action and computer-generated animation. But the cars zipping around the track look interchangeable, and the action sequences are more video game than movie. Writers/directors (Lana and Lilly) Wachowski (The Matrix trilogy) attracted some major acting talent. Emile Hirsch is fine as Speed, though the role doesn't exactly offer the challenge of his Oscar-caliber performance in Into the Wild. Christina Ricci is his girlfriend, Trixie, and Susan Sarandon and John Goodman play his parents. As a child, Speed Racer is not much of a scholar, preferring instead to hang around with his idol, older brother Rex. When Rex dies in a mysterious crash, Speed honors his memory by following in his footsteps. Doggedly loyal to the family racing business, he turns down a profitable sponsorship deal from a conglomerate, so Royalton Industries' megalomaniacal owner (Roger Allam) promises to ruin Speed's career. Speed, determined to restore the family honor by competing in the cross-country rally that took his brother's life, teams up with Racer X (Matthew Fox) to expose Royalton's corruption. Though it's a simple tale that should be understandable for viewers as young as 6, the filmmakers put so much emphasis on visual panache that narrative coherence suffers. Yes, it's a candy-colored Day-Glo world, but there's a liveliness missing from this lead-footed Speed Racer.

Today, it's sounding like those former "teens and twenty-somethings" are, in fact, picking up the slack.