Behold the racing stripes and lipstick so red they’d make Technicolor blush, and live-action performances (by almost everyone but star Emile Hirsch) reaching for the transcendently unrestrained hysteria of action anime.

| Apr 3, 2025

The Wachowskis’ style is very distinctive, and while The Matrix series is far grittier than Speed Racer, they share the same belief that good people and love are the answer to changing the world for the better.

| Jul 25, 2023

It’s a cinematic sugar rush.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 10, 2023

While I wouldn't go as far as to say Speed Racer is a masterpiece, it is a supremely good time.

| Dec 29, 2021

The instant the movie starts, viewers are introduced to a psychedelic world in which fast cars reign supreme and the laws of physics have long been lost.

| Original Score: 6/10 | Nov 28, 2020

It is Ricci who shines most brightly here.

| Original Score: 1.5/4.0 | Sep 24, 2020

Speed Racer has the extraordinary style down pat, and its sense of abstraction is what sells the vast race-fixing conspiracy lurking in the background of the plot.

| Jun 30, 2020

A misstep of epic proportions -- an overbearing mix of candy-coated visuals and an incoherent plot.

| Original Score: F | Oct 29, 2019

Its main attraction is: It is pure movement, a plastic experiment that does not look like anything that has been done before. [Full Review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jul 20, 2019

A flawed experiment with a heart of gold.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 5, 2019

The action in Speed Racer is top notch in every sense, as though everything the Wachowskis worked on in the Matrix trilogy was simply a warm up.

| Jan 8, 2019

An excellent cast, story and visuals combine for an adrenaline-fueled experience. Go, Speed Racer!

| Original Score: A- | Aug 17, 2017

<I>Speed Racer</I> is a deca-million-dollar fable about how corporations can stifle creativity—“That’s because the sponsors control the media!” The mixed message has its charm... most of the brands on view are keening gibberish, towering neon monuments...

| Original Score: 10/10 | Jul 18, 2014

Amid the overly earnest tone, (almost) squeaky-clean humor and familiar messages about teamwork and integrity is the rare film family that's as strong at the start as they are by the end.

| May 29, 2013

This is Wacky Races powered by Enzo Ferrari and designed by Andy Warhol - candy-coloured carnage with a turbo-charged engine.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 14, 2012

The filmic side effect of eating an entire bowl full of sugar, Speed Racer is designed entirely with one audience in mind, and despite it's best efforts it's not going to appeal to anyone else.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Mar 30, 2011

What grounds the spectacle, pushing it beyond a two-hour ejaculation of sensation, is its yearning for innocence

| Aug 26, 2009

Fellow critics mercilessly denounced this dazzling, visually inventive adaptation; one of the ten best films of 2008

| Original Score: A- | Feb 27, 2009

Cut from car to driver to announcer to audience and over and over again, ad nauseam. Such pretty racing scenes, so little to actually see.

| Original Score: 4/10 | Nov 14, 2008

The brothers swamp the fragile story and characters with such a deluge of CGI tricks and elaborate action sequences that it proves hard to care about the humans on screen.

| Oct 18, 2008