PopSmart

Reviewed here, the new Speed Racer film is so frenetic, freakily colored and aggressively fake, you’ll watch the first seven minutes convinced that someone has laced your popcorn with a powerful hallucinogen. There’s a silver lining to Speed Racer’s psychedelic vomit, however: the film has inspired our nation’s film critics to some of their most creative turns of phrase in years. Who will win the race to write the best, nastiest quip?

Stephen Colbert of “The Colbert Report” got the week off to an impressive start:

“Put 80 pounds of fireworks into an industrial dryer, crawl right in there with them, turn it on and then light the fuse. It’ll give you a good idea of the visual onslaught you’ll be enduring.”

The New York Times’ A.O. Scott concedes:

Yes, the colors are hot, the set design is cool, and the sidekick chimpanzee is cute, but the action sequences — the hyperreal video-game kineticism on which the Wachowskis’ reputation for virtuosity has rested — are chaotic and nonsensical. The sleek computer-animated racecars flip, jump and slide from side to side, but few of their feats elicit anything like the amazement or surprise of, say, watching moderately skilled teenage skateboarders in a parking lot.

MSNBC’s Alonso Duralde suggests:

“Imagine someone pouring hot, melted Starburst candies into your corneas, and you just begin to approximate the experience of Speed Racer…”

(more…)

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(Photo © 2007 Miramax Films)

Basically, my plan for Saturday after a visit to the Georgia State Holiday Iron Pour is to force-feed myself movies like a goose being readied for a Frenchman’s crusty bread until my brain or my stamina buckles. By noon Sunday, Dec. 16, my picks for the Southeastern Film Critics Association are due, and there are still some huge holes in my 2007 list: Gone Baby Gone, Once, The King of Kong.

Every fall the studios send out screeners for all the award-worthy films so critics can play catch-up. At first it’s like an early Christmas with all that delicious eye candy rolling in. Or maybe Halloween is the better analogy: You get frantic and squirrelly as you madly, obsessively accumulate the sweet stuff. But when it comes down to eating all of it, it kind of makes you hurl.

Even as a professional critic, I have my limits. When it came time to take my 6-year-old to see Alvin and the Chipmunks this Sunday, my husband drew the short straw.

I shouldn’t complain, though. A weekend night spent watching Atonement, The Lookout, The Devil Came on Horseback, etc., etc., is not most people’s idea of an ordeal. I can visualize my father laughing at the absurdity of such complaints about my “job.” When I told him I was majoring in film at the University of Florida, I’m sure to his ears it sounded as absurd as majoring in snorkeling or recreational drugs. But it actually is a job, and even the art form I love the most can at times feel like more of a chore. Movies weren’t meant to be digested like a bag of potato chips one right after the other.

I know, I know, shut the fuck up.

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