Variety likes it:

True to its origins as a ‘60s Japanese animated kiddie favorite, “Speed Racer” blasts into cultural prominence four decades later as an ultra-cartoony actioner defined by its Day-Glo colors, resistance to any laws of physics, and notions of good and evil that go no further than having the hero drive a white car. Aimed squarely at family audiences, the Wachowski Brothers’ return behind the camera for the first time since “The Matrix” trilogy is a blur of video action painting and very loud sounds notable solely for its technical wizardry. Otherwise, it’s pure cotton candy — entirely non-nutritious but too sweet and pretty for young people to resist. General audiences worldwide look to make this Warner Bros. release a substantial hit in all formats, from Imax to eventual homeview sales, with extra coin assured from moppets who require repeat viewings.

The film is indeed a technical marvel, and I think Variety actually doesn’t quite give it enough credit: The car-racing sequences are dizzying, elating, constantly evolving and surprising; that aspect humanizes and transforms the animation and, combined with the psychedelia that infuses virtually every scene, makes for a nearly mind-altering movie experience.

Perhaps it’s the (fried) synapses talking, but I found the climatic race of this very long movie pleasurable in an almost Ben-Hur-ian way.

The big question was how subversive the film would be; the directors, the Wachowski brothers, are known for the Matrix series, but before that did a brutal and sex-driven modern noir, Bound. The Matrix is passé now, of course, but from the films’ interesting racial casting on down the brothers demonstrated both a disruptive vision and a commitment to risk-taking. And then there’s Larry/Laurenca Wachowski’s transvestitism ….

And so for Speed Racer, they … concocted a subtext-less family film. Staged as a hilarious, deadpan homage to the clunky blocking of the original Japanese animated series from the 1960s, the live-action parts of the film amble along, hitting the marks of the very familiar tale of the talented young star who can go all the way if just given the chance. (The film’s story is so retro that it doesn’t even nod to a Rocky-style “going the distance is all that matters” theme, and our hero, the titular Speed Racer, barely registers as rebellious and hotheaded.) The point of the film is the digital animation, which as it amazes throws down a gauntlet as well.

Indeed, the entire film serves as a withering riposte to Pixar’s Cars, and it is perhaps on the filmic level that the subversiveness emerges. After seeing Speed Racer it’s hard to take John Lassiter’s little auto toon seriously. I don’t have a copy of Ben-Hur around but I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that the bravura finale here was deliberately based on its rhythms and beats. And damned if at one point, as Speed prepares to meet his destiny and revs his engine, the sound doesn’t drop out—in an eerie homage to James Taylor’s silent, existential sprint into celluloid heat at the end of Two-Lane Blacktop.