I just saw "Speed Racer" and I'm still not sure if I really liked it or not.

You have to understand that Speed Racer is part of my childhood. I would get home after school and WLVI Channel 56 of Cambridge MA would have an afternoon of cartoons for us kids. Uncle Dale Dorman, a Boston radio DJ, was the host. He would take me through the best hour of my day. I know there were other shows as part of the afternoon, but the ones I can recall as if I just watched them yesterday were "Speed Racer" and "Kimba the White Lion".

I could get into a whole post on the "Kimba"/"Lion King" ripoff but I've already ranted about Disney this week.

"Speed Racer" was filled with all the action, adventure and suspense I could cram in my 5th grade mind. As I sped around on my Schwinn bicycle I was actually at the wheel of the Mach 5. More often that not, I was also the mysterious Racer X at the wheel of the Shooting Star. I could never talk my mother into sewing me a full head mask like his to make the experience complete. She kept saying something about impaired vision. Which made no sense to me; I HAD TO be Racer X.

Speaking of which; Lois Lane cannot hold a candle to the entire Racer family when it comes to not seeing through a secret identity. How could they not have seen through his disguise?! All he was wearing was a stupid mask! Rex Racer.....Racer X. Say it a few times fast in a row and you can figure it out! Sheesh!

I can still remember when I first started driving that words of advice from Pops Racer came to mind. "Coast into the turn and down shift as you come out of it!" I actually tired that once. Apparently, it works a lot better in the Mach 5 on a race track than it does on the back streets of Oakland Beach.

As for the movie....

I was not as offended by the Mach 6 as I thought I was going to be. I still don't see the need for it. The Mach 5 is supposed to be the best engineered car on the planet. If you're going to make improvements make them on the Mach 5 and don't go replacing it. There is NO REPLACEMENT for the Mach 5. The enhancements they did make to it in the movie were supposed to be original designs by Pops not some CIA-like police force.

The casting was great. This was as close as human beings could come to recreating the animated characters. Each actor was perfectly matched; from John Goodman as Pops to Benno Fürmann as Inspector Detector. The one exception was Kick Gurry as Sparky. Since when was Sparky an Aussie?! YUK!

The whole flashy, colorful world this Speed Racer inhabits reminds the audience that this comes from an animated universe. I liked that. I kept trying to tell myself that very thing as I watched this world's weird version of automobile racing. The drifting, jumping and Kung Fu moves the cars went through seemed alien. While "Speed Racer" was animated, it was still about a car race. These didn't look like car races.

The whole corrupt racing sponsor story got a bit stretched confusing me and boring the kids in the audience to a point where some started running up and down the aisles. The language went over the top at points and I really could have done without Spritle flipping the bird and Chimm Chimm flinging poo.

In the end, I was most happy when I heard the little kids around me reacting to the movie. The rug rats, some whose parents might nit have even been born when Speed was first aired, were now watching, laughing and cheering. Maybe one of them is now riding around their neighborhood on a bicycle turned into a Mach 5. That's cool!