Last night I caught a sneak preview of “Speed Racer,” the would-be summer blockbuster from the makers of “The Matrix.”
This overlong adaptation of the cheesy kids show of yesteryear has a cool color palate, a lead performance from Emile Hirsch that’s better than the film deserves, impenetrable plot twists and computer-generated stunt work that break physics laws left and right. (I refer you to Tom Rogers’ book “Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics” if you are interested in such things.)
It’s also got three or four uses of the a-word, one s-word and a kid flipping the bird to a bad guy.
Now, I’m not a prude when it comes to language. I’ll happily quote along with “Glengarry Glen Ross” and “Raging Bull.” What bugs me is the unnecessary nature of the usage here - and the fact that it is embedded in a PG movie that has no greater ambition than to gosh-wow its audience.
So am I just being an old guy? Should George Carlin’s “Seven words you can’t say on television” be welcomed in PG movies? Is the fact that my 6-year-old son has heard these words before enough reason for me to chill out and take whatever the “Speed Racer” creative folks throw at us?
And would the language be more tolerable if the film weren’t so dull?
Your thoughts?
This overlong adaptation of the cheesy kids show of yesteryear has a cool color palate, a lead performance from Emile Hirsch that’s better than the film deserves, impenetrable plot twists and computer-generated stunt work that break physics laws left and right. (I refer you to Tom Rogers’ book “Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics” if you are interested in such things.)
It’s also got three or four uses of the a-word, one s-word and a kid flipping the bird to a bad guy.
Now, I’m not a prude when it comes to language. I’ll happily quote along with “Glengarry Glen Ross” and “Raging Bull.” What bugs me is the unnecessary nature of the usage here - and the fact that it is embedded in a PG movie that has no greater ambition than to gosh-wow its audience.
So am I just being an old guy? Should George Carlin’s “Seven words you can’t say on television” be welcomed in PG movies? Is the fact that my 6-year-old son has heard these words before enough reason for me to chill out and take whatever the “Speed Racer” creative folks throw at us?
And would the language be more tolerable if the film weren’t so dull?
Your thoughts?
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Seriously, it seems fairly pointless. Why would they feel the need to use such language in something based on a Saturday morning cartoon and aimed at the under-10 set? Obvioiusly realism is out the door as a justification. I'm all for artistic freedom and dead-set against censorship, but I'm not a big fan of crassness or lazy writing either.
That's part of what threw me. There is a choice word or two in ET and Zathura, but at least they seem to come out of the characters, not the writers pandering.
I would find this objectionable for the same reason I find the incessant fart jokes and already-dated pop-culture references in SHREK tiresome - not because they're leading down some slippery slope of cultural decay, but because they're just, well, lazy - the substitution of a cheap shot for genuine cleverness. (There are entire films based on this principle, e.g. the _______ MOVIE (date, scary, etc.) franchise.)
Just my thoughts.
--Lou
Just remember: A-I-D-A. Attention, Interest, Decision, Action.
--Lou