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One minute it's a live action cartoon, the next moment it's a dreary corporate espionage potboiler. If I’m still not being clear, what I mean to say is that this movie is an infuriating mess that makes me want to swallow my car keys. The plot (such as it is) revolves around Speed Racer (Emile Hirsch, slightly more charismatic than a bowl of cold oatmeal), still grieving over the mysterious death of his older brother Rex (Scott Porter) as he’s courted by corporate sponsors for a contract. Helping him through this struggle are his hard working father Pops (John Goodman), Mom (Susan Sarandon), his mechanic Sparky (Kick Gurry), little brother Spritle (Paulie Litt), and Platonic Girlfriend Trixie (Christina Ricci).

Also there’s a monkey, and God knows more movies could use monkeys (Spielberg? Are you reading this?)

Speed’s most persistent suitor is powerful CEO Arnold Royalton (Roger Allam), founder of Royalton Industries. His company apparently owns and/or controls everything in whatever hemisphere of whatever planet these people live on, because companies can do that. This also makes him inherently evil because again – corporations. Royalton offers Speed a fat contract but the more aggressive he becomes, the more Speed feels drawn back to his family. Eventually, Speed begins to pay a professional price for his decision, drawing the attention of the mysterious Racer X (Matthew Fox), and the shadowy organization behind him. There’s a cancer in the sport of racing, and it’s up to Speed to stop it before it spreads too far.

Wow, that sounds like a great movie that Ron Howard should make. What it does not sound like is a movie about a guy who’s so wholesome he’s waiting to kiss his girlfriend (but no tongue!) until he Wins the Big Race. Is this a kid's movie about a guy trying to help his family by jumping his car over everything, or is this a morbid generational crime thriller nearly as long and twice as complicated as The Godfather? And is this the kind of movie where people die, or not? Because from scene to scene it's not always clear whether we just saw someone killed, or comically jacked up Wile E. Coyote style. I feel like both happened. This kind of ambiguity is not ideal for a kids' movie.

And don't get me started on the film's anti-capitalist spiel. No, I'm not an Ayn Rand enthusiast. I just find it hilarious that a $120 million movie bankrolled by a massive corporation, rendered on a roomful of supercomputers and marketed on every continent but Antarctica has the stones to lecture ME about avarice. By trying to weave some kind of gritty, proletariat manifesto into a movie where everything is made of candy and some people use bees as weapons, the Wachowskis swing at two pitches and hit neither. They’ve disappointed anyone who wanted to have fun who wanted to have fun AND former Occupy protesters looking for a call to arms. That’s unfortunate, because if you squint you'll see - trapped somewhere inside this twisted wreck is a really fun movie, dying to get out.

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