Larry and Andy Wachowski are fans as well as filmmakers; their movies, homages to the genres they love. The Matrix, along with being a mainstream and critical success, is also such a pitch-perfect example of cyberpunk that university professors now teach alongside William Gibson's Neuromancer. V for Vendetta, their much-maligned follow-up, tackled one of Alan Moore's more convoluted graphic novels and managed not to end up like The League of Extraordinary Gentleman. And now there's Speed Racer, an esthetically marvelous and totally preposterous film that reproduces every nuance of Saturday morning Japanimation, and refuses to apologize for an ounce of it.

In a way, Speed Racer is both a natural follow-up to and the antithesis of The Matrix. While the latter revels in the goth darkness, the former is blindingly colorful. Speed Racer is not just based on anime -- it is anime, and neither a more realistic cartoon nor a more caricatured live-action film have you ever seen. Emile Hirsch somehow manages to purse his lips when he's speaking so that Speed's mouth movements are as rigid as the cartoon's; Christina Ricci's coquettish Trixie is played with just the right amount of Betty Boop; Matthew Fox even manages to lose his Lost persona portraying the enigmatic -- and totally badass -- Racer X. (Who else can flip a car going 400 milers per hour and punch another driver in the head at the same time?) And that's what ultimately makes the film so much fun. Cars rip through the screen at breakneck speed through constantly changing, meticulously detailed landscapes, and all you can do is hold on.

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