Speed Racer seems to have audiences sharply divided — at least the audiences who have sought it out. The majority seem to find it a headache-inducing nightmare, but there is a vocal minority who find it a generation-defining experience, an either you-get-it-or-you-don’t line in the day-glo orange sand. I find myself somewhere in the middle — I think it’s a hugely sophisticated piece of cinematic art, but I would also say that it has some significant problems — problems that apparently did not register with Sam, who, upon coming home from the movie, swept his Star Wars toys aside and got out his long-ignored box of little racecars (including a tiny Mach 5 from his younger, more innocent days) and staged a tiny cross-country rally in our TV room, complete with multiple environments and death-defying jumps.

The universe of the movie, the production design, the crazy logic of the sets, the music, the editing, the colors, the tone of the performances, I think all that is quite impressive, but it didn’t seem particularly revolutionary or generation-defining to me. I had my “Oh-my-God-what-we-can-do-with-computers” moment while watching Sin City, so Speed Racer didn’t awe me in that way. If anything, the look of Speed Racer kept reminding me of The Phantom Menace — another movie where, no matter what else you want to say about it, looks astonishing — and then I found out at the end that they have the same director of photography. As in The Phantom Menace, there’s always something extraordinary happening on screen, but not always with the dramatic impact intended. It may be my age showing, but the racing sequences in Speed Racer strike me very much like the pod race in The Phantom Menace — both are hugely sophisticated in their design and execution, but lack dramatic momentum. They are wild and weird and loco and in many ways stunning in their originality, but I found myself wanting to care more.

I had to leave the theater four times during the movie to fetch popcorn and drinks and to escort children to the restroom, so I won’t pretend to present a coherent analysis of the movie at this time. One thing I did notice, however, was a narrative that was both willfully simplistic and, to my ear, unnecessarily complicated. The world is both utterly, deliriously cartoonish and then surprisingly hard-headed and realistic (another reason it kept reminding me of The Phantom Menace). The gonzo racing sequences and slapstick kiddie antics will pause for long, involved discussions of contracts and sponsorships and automotive-part promotions and stock deals and corporate intrigue. The odd thing is, I kind of remember this kind of thing from the show as well, watching them when my kids were 4 and 3 and wondering then, too, if the stories were too sophisticated for them to understand.

(UPDATE: an hour’s worth of research has confirmed my suspicions: the narrative of Speed Racer is remarkably true to its roots — for good and bad.  Auto-part production, corporate intrigue and shady deals are endemic to the material — you just never remember any of that from when you’re a kid.  And it’s not presented with the exhaustive detail it’s given in the feature.)

On the other hand, I don’t really care if a story is too sophisticated for my kids, only if it’s too boring. My question is, if you live in a universe where racetracks turn upside down and run through ice caves, where characters live with chimpanzees, anonymous racers scour the roads dealing with gangsters, racecars fly and flip and sprout circular saws and villainous racecars launch beehives at their competitors, why make the bad guy plot so plausible and complex? I sat through Act II of Speed Racer watching through my charges’ eyes, trying to find the kernel of the action that would explain things on a level they could understand. Finally the movie got to it — The bad guy wants to win so badly that he cheats.  That’s the bad-guy plot in one sentence, but the movie says it in a dozen scenes of back-room dealings, explanations of racing administration history and under-the-table negotiations. It was a rare instance where I wanted the movie to be a little simpler.