{"id":955,"date":"2008-05-14T16:32:04","date_gmt":"2008-05-14T23:32:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/?p=955"},"modified":"2008-05-14T16:32:04","modified_gmt":"2008-05-14T23:32:04","slug":"no-need-for-speed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/?p=955","title":{"rendered":"No Need for Speed"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve done this before and you probably have, too. When someone professes to dislike a piece of entertainment that you happen to enjoy quite muchly, you come up for some excuse specific to the disliker that explains their dislike. For example, I’ve heard that I do not like The Phantom Menace<\/em> not because it’s shitty, but because it’s “a kids’ movie.” Similarly, when a friend and I professed our general hatred for Into the Wild<\/em>, we were told by various people that we did not enjoy it because 1) we’re too young! and 2) we’re girls and 3) we hate camping.<\/p>\n

I’m having kind of a similar thing with Speed Racer<\/em>. A lot of folks in the geekscape have come out heavily for this movie, rallying against the mean ol’ critics who didn’t get it.<\/p>\n

Dudes, dudettes, fellow geekly brothers and sisters, I’m sorry, but Speed Racer<\/em> was SO FUCKING BORING.<\/p>\n

And here are a few rationales folks might offer for me not liking it.
\n
\n1) The TPM defense, aka “It’s a kids’ movie!”<\/p>\n

Yes, OK. You know what? All the kids in my theater were similarly disgruntled. They sat still for the races and that’s it. Compare that with something like Ratatouille<\/em>, where the wee ones were simply too entranced to do anything but watch. I actually would have liked Speed Racer <\/em> more if it had just decided to be a straight-up kids’ movie, the plotty scenes simply connective tissue between the wham-bang-awesome action. Instead, there’s a lot of talking and flashbacking and stuff<\/em> that somehow makes for over two hours of uninteresting film.<\/p>\n

2) It’s not for me! I am not the target audience, obviously.<\/p>\n

You guys? I am SO the target audience! I was psyched for this movie. I love bright colors and whizzy kitsch and fun-for-the-sake-of-fun and girls in pink helicopters. Like, the Puffy AmiYumi theme song for Teen Titans<\/em>? I love that! This movie should have been the visual equivalent of that. Instead, it’s a lazy mess. It didn’t feel, to me, like anyone was having fun. It wants to take off and be something, but it just sits there and coasts on visual prowess. I wasn’t joking when I Twittered about falling asleep. I actually did drop out and take a snore-y, drooly nap.<\/p>\n

3) I didn’t get it! I didn’t understand what they were trying to do!<\/p>\n

I did! I totally did! I just didn’t like it.<\/p>\n

That, I guess, is sort of the heart and guts of what I’m trying to say, here: you can get something and still not like it. Or fall asleep to it. Speed Racer<\/em>? I just don’t like you. Sorry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve done this before and you probably have, too. When someone professes to dislike a piece of entertainment that you happen to enjoy quite muchly, you come up for some excuse specific to the disliker that explains their dislike. For example, I’ve heard that I do not like The Phantom Menace not because it’s shitty, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bitching","category-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/955\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}