Archive for May 2008
The first hint that you won’t be losing yourself in an endless-summer reverie during Doug Pray’s Surfwise is the moment you glimpse an 80-something man climbing onto his exercise bike naked. There are more moments like that: Here’s the au naturel fitness freak’s wrinkled wife, boasting that their family “all have scrupulously clean assholes.” And several of the couple’s nine children talking about life growing up in a 24-foot camper, listening to Mom and Dad screw loudly every night. Both parents taught their kids that “fucking”—a term the elders use easily and often—is the key to not only personal happiness but world peace.
A gnarly wave would cut the squirm factor nicely right about then.
Surfwise may be about a brood of ’boarders, but it’s less about hanging ten than living off the grid. The patriarch is Dorian “Doc” Paskowitz, a Jewish, Stanford-graduated doctor who, even though he’d risen to become president of the American Medical Association’s Hawaii chapter, realized he chose the wrong profession when his peers proved more interested in becoming wealthy than helping the sick.
So Doc—even his now-adult kids call him Doc—abandoned the life he knew and shoved off for Israel: “I went out into the desert, like Jesus of Nazareth and a lot of other screwballs,” he says. Doc taught the people of Tel Aviv how to surf and met a Jewish woman who “taught me to eat pussy, and that changed my life a great deal.” He returned to the States sexually liberated and mentally renewed, determined to live as naturally as possible.
To Doc, this meant no fixed address, no formal education for his children, and instructing his third and current wife, Juliette, to nurture “his” kids not much differently than a gorilla would. His attitude toward breeding was nearly Duggar-like: Juliette says in the film that she spent a solid 10 years either pregnant or breast-feeding. Though Joshua, the youngest, asserts that his father’s attitude was more purposeful than let-go-and-let-God: “We were born because Doc wanted to repopulate the world with Jews. That’s fucking hardcore, man!”
Of course, the defining element of the Paskowitzes’ lifestyle was surfing, which they did on a daily basis wherever their caravan—and Doc’s gut-guided itinerary—took them. The children—David, Jonathan, Abraham, Israel, Moses, Adam, Salvador, Navah (the only girl), and Joshua—born between 1959 and 1974, weren’t home-schooled with a sanctioned curriculum but instead encouraged to read and hang, with Doc convinced that there was a crucial difference between life-gotten wisdom and traditional education.
Most essential, though, was poverty. Doc occasionally took low-paying, temporary work treating the needy, and eventually started the Paskowitz Surf Camp, which still exists. But he once gathered the family around to giddily show them their literal last dime and refused a $40,000 inheritance from an aunt. They frequently dined on twigs. Instead of presents, the children were given the gift of “the sea.”
Perhaps the looniest part of the Paskowitz story, though, is Doc’s insistence that, really, “we were the most conventional of people.”
After a run in recent years of surfing films both fictional (Blue Crush) and non- (Riding Giants, Step Into Liquid), the character-driven essence of Surfwise is a surprisingly refreshing break from tradition. Watching a pro negotiate monster waves, especially on the big screen, can be awe-inspiring, gasp-inducing, and flat-out gorgeous—but such scenes also become boring as hell when there’s not much else to go along with them.
Pray, best known for a pair of music documentaries, 1996’s Hype! (on grunge) and 2001’s Scratch (on turntablism), provides plenty of grainy sun-and-surf footage to go along with his interviews of the Paskowitz clan; like the recording-happy families of Capturing the Friedmans and The Devil and Daniel Johnston, Doc and his crew videotaped and photographed everything from Juliette breast-feeding to the kids overtaking a beach. Modern slice-of-life scenes document everyone individually (their atypical upbringing, David attests, “created nine only children,” and for many years the family was estranged): Israel is shown with his autistic son, Navah is stuck in traffic, and Doc is greeting the day with a bizarre outburst—“Good morning, Mommy and Baby!”—before doffing his drawers and getting on the bike.
Surfwise’s story is essentially Doc’s, and even as an old coot he comes across as maniacal, controlling, and more than a little crazed—not quite the gentle, life-loving, and spiritually attuned superman he strives to be. The more compelling aspect of Surfwise, though, is the obvious question: Are the kids dysfunctional or what? As Adam perfectly describes his predicament, “My dad trained me to be one of three things—a surfer, a bum, or a rock star.” Most of the kids fled the nest as soon as they could.
Minus a few regrets, a fair amount of anger, and therapy both professional and self-guided, though, the junior Paskowitzes seem shockingly well-adjusted and have all found success, mostly in the film and music industries. Adam is perhaps the best-known, scoring a hit with “Got You (Where I Want You)” while singing for his former band, the Flys, though he sometimes thinks he should have gone into medicine. “Of course, never going to school might have been a problem,” he deadpans. Abraham also wanted to be a doctor but became disillusioned when he realized how long it would take him to catch up after getting a GED. Despite finding their ways, nearly all the children believe Doc was selfish for not giving them the chance at the kind of education he was able to receive—and later dismiss.
Surfwise rambles a bit as it cuts back and forth in time and clumsily tries to tether the Paskowitz story to a larger message about America’s unhealthy and environmentally unfriendly habits; late-film shots of large waistlines and polluted lakes ultimately feel like they belong in another movie. Even with awkward social commentary, Surfwise sails above its peers, offering substance in a feature you might not have expected to have a thought in its scenic little head.
Let’s pretend that Made of Honor didn’t happen and his last role was really in Michael Clayton:
Director and Actor Sydney Pollack Dies at 73
Translation: Wait for cable
A French spy parody shouldn’t feel more warmed-over than the continuation of a 27-year-old Hollywood franchise. (There’s another opening this week you may have heard of.) But after previous Bond-skewerers from Get Smart to The Naked Gun to Austin Powers, OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies is just another stretched-thin case of been there, spoofed that.
Jean Dujardin’s spook is by far the most entertaining part of writer-director Michel Hazanavicius’ comedy, co-written by Jean-François Halin (though the original OSS 117 character was created by novelist Jean Bruce and the focus of serious French thrillers in the ’60s). Looking like a young Sean Connery, Dujardin is alternately dashing, goofy, and, of course, mostly completely clueless while supremely confident in his halfassed skills. (Think Steve Carell in The Office; anticipate the same mix in Carell’s upcoming theatrical redo of Get Smart.)
The film globe-trots from Berlin to Paris to Cairo between 1945 and 1955, with Agent Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath fighting Nazis and later sent to Egypt to investigate the disappearance of his former partner, Jack Jefferson (Philippe Lefebvre). There he’s aided by the sultry Larmina (Bérénice Bejo), who pours herself into cocktail dresses and endures Bath’s sloppy come-ons while he takes over the chicken farm Jefferson was in charge of and not-so-surreptitiously digs for clues. There’s corruption afoot, but good luck figuring it out: The filmmakers are more concerned with running gags than a
clear plot—a move that, counterproductively, sometimes makes Bath seem like a downright genius while you try to piece things together.
Hazanavicius’ go-to laugh is a coop full of chickens that squawk when the lights are on but go dead silent the second a switch is flipped; Bath is endlessly fascinated by this phenomenon, and it’s amusing for a while—the trouble is that the joke is about all the movie’s got besides a bit of unpleasant homophobia.
More effective are the scenes proving that the international spy is actually not so worldly, routinely mocking Muslims and Egyptian culture without the slightest idea of how offensive he’s being: When Larmina says that she doesn’t drink because her religion forbids it, for instance, Bath replies, “What stupid religion would ban alcohol?”
His ignorance gets him into further trouble, but as the movie wears on, it’s increasingly likely that you won’t care whether he worms his way out of it or not. In fact, the funniest line may be Bath’s surprisingly blunt, “I’m such an asshole.” Too bad Bath’s dull escapades squash the character’s stoopid-but-candid charm.
I TOLD you our dinner reservation was at 4:30!
You don’t need the mind-enhancing powers of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’s titular MacGuffin to guess that in the fourth installment of the franchise, our man in the fedora is going to have to take some punches. And not just the nose-busting kind—think retirement homes, or pruned geezers shaking their canes at good-for-nothin’ punks before falling into a deep and sudden sleep.
“You know, for an old man, you ain’t bad in a fight,” one particular good-for-nothin’ punk says to the iconic archaeologist. “What are you, like, 80?”
Henry Jones Jr. is hardly ready to start spending his afternoons feeding ducks. But when word leaked of a third sequel, to be released 19 years after the character literally rode off into the sunset in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade—and with star Harrison Ford now a Medicare-friendly 65—both the actor and series creators Steven Spielberg and George Lucas had to realize that even adventure-hungry devotees were snickering about the prospect of a decrepit action hero.
So in a best-offense-is-a-good-defense move, the filmmakers (including scripter David Koepp, mercifully fleshing out Lucas’ story idea lest some policy-droning spacemen show up) decided to throw a few he-ain’t-what-he-used-to-be jabs at themselves first.
Those jokes stop before they get old; the same can’t be said about the cutesy gopher reaction shots that front-load the film—which, when combined with a ’50s rock ’n’ roll soundtrack instead of John Williams’ famed theme makes the new project feel like a Caddyshack prequel. And speaking of spacemen: Well, there’s no intergalactic politicking here, but the plot does involve aliens. Why did it have to be aliens?
Ford’s age, an uneven tone, an occasionally ludicrous hunt for crystal skull s that may have some fans scratching their bony ones—none of these eyebrow-raisers are enough to keep the newest Indy from being a decent popcorn-muncher. It kicks off in 1957 in Nevada, with Dr. Jones betrayed by partner Mac McHale (Ray Winstone, who. was. Beowulf! but is utterly personality-free here) and cornered by the KGB. Their leader is Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett, also dull beyond her severe hair and cheekbones), and she wants Jones to help her locate a gewgaw that will boost her telepathy and therefore enable her to take over the world, or some such.
Jones escapes her, in a creepy-cool sequence that echoes Spielberg’s obsession with suburbia as he stumbles into a mannequin-occupied, Howdy Doody-tuned home of a nuclear-testing site and, uh, survives an atomic blast. (This, astonishingly, isn’t the film’s most unrealistic stunt.) But Jones and Spalko will meet again when the professor is approached by a kid named Mutt (Shia LaBeouf), a greaser dropout whose mom is missing and was told Indy is the one man who can save her. A couple of chase scenes later, Mutt is officially Jones’ sidekick, and they’re off to South America to hunt for…stuff. (There’s a lot of monotonous, none-too-slick exposition here if you care to listen hard.)
Like its predecessors, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is dominated by two milieus: dust bowl and rain forest. The adventure-serial animated maps, complete with a plane and red line to show the audience where our heroes are traveling, are back, and Spielberg’s use of film and minimal CGI mostly keeps things looking old-school. (Still, longtime Spielberg collaborator but first-time Indy cinematographer Janusz Kaminski can’t help but give the film his trademark polish; dirt roads have never been so beatifically lit.)
Even if the supporting characters are flat, Koepp, who last scripted 2005’s excellent Zathura: A Space Adventure, gives the script a lighter touch than previous installments, with Indy being simultaneously grumpier and more charming. Jones’ reunion with Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen, looking her age compared with her more steadily working and worked-on peers) lends a spark, though their relationship, like the others here, is about as thin as the pages of Indy’s tattered book of clues.
But really, the Indiana Jones series was always about the adventure, not the people, and in that regard the important boxes have all been ticked off: There are skin-crawling critters, spooky catacombs, sword fights between enemies straddling speeding jeeps. More important, Ford doesn’t look ridiculous. Turns out this old man can still take hits to both body and ego and remain as cheer-worthy as the first time he rocked a bullwhip and dusty lid.
You’ll shoot your eye out
Like Fugitive Pieces, Irina Palm also involves a young boy and tragic circumstances, though its dialogue doesn’t get much more mournful than this: “He’s dying, I’m wanking…it’s a mess!” Consider that the line is delivered by an English grandma who’s taken a job polishing the kind of knobs not found on doors to raise money for her grandson’s operation, and “mournful” becomes “hilarious.”
Which would be great, if director-co-writer (with two others!) Sam Garbarski intended the film as farce. But the story of Maggie (Marianne Faithfull, looking significantly older than her character’s 50 years) is supposed to be one of determination and empowerment, about the lengths—and girths—a formerly timid dowager will go to in order to save someone’s life. In the process, naturally, she also finds some spunk.
When little Olly (Corey Burke), generically ill, needs to be flown to Australia for an operation, his young, hand-to-mouth parents Sarah (Siobhán Hewlett) and Tom (Kevin Bishop), Maggie’s son, are told that universal health care will not cover their travel and hospital expenses. Maggie, struggling herself, tries applying for a loan (with no income and not even a house or car for collateral), then approaches a temp agency (also fruitless, considering she’s somehow gotten away with never working a day in her life).
Maggie then walks around London, with Faithfull practically carrying an “Acting in Progress!” placard as she shuffles along doing her best version of stricken, accompanied by repetitive, faux-edgy guitar strums of despair. In her daze, she catches a “hostess wanted” sign in a window but apparently not the name of the business, which would be Sexy World.
Mags thinks she’ll be making tea and such, so she’s shocked and/or horrified when the club’s requisitely oily owner, Miki (Miki Manojlovic), asks her, “Can you wank men off?” Like any honorable woman, Maggie leaves in a huff. But Miki’s promise of several hundred pounds a week—from servicing a coin-operated glory hole!—brings her back.
Several components of Irina Palm—the title becomes Maggie’s stage name—are absurd. There’s Maggie’s relationship with her daughter-in-law, strained for conflict’s sake alone, and her son’s ridiculously over-the-top reaction when he discovers how she got the cash. There’s her infuriating way of ignoring her friends and neighbors the many times she runs into them, running away like a rabbit instead of simply deflecting their questions.
Best of the worst, though, are the money shots: Maggie’s look of disgust when she’s “trained,” and seemingly endless scenes of her on the job, in her flower-printed smock, stroking strategically hidden dicks. (One time, quite awesomely, we get the johns’ perspectives, most clutching the wall and moaning comically.)
The stricken street-walking, so to speak, is shown a few more times, and once Maggie discovers that she’s got the best whacking mitts in Soho, Garbarski also includes many shots of her staring at her hands. And did I mention the bad case of “penis elbow?” Or the love her new career helps Maggie find? Maggie might have helped save her grandson, but Irina Palm’s cast risks dying from embarrassment.
Fugitive Pieces tells the story of a man who tries to marry one woman while still living with another. So, you don’t blame Jakob’s wife for leaving—well, maybe you do for a little while—but the situation isn’t tawdry, it’s tragic. The other woman isn’t a lover but his adored older sister, last seen being dragged off by Nazis decades before and likely long dead. And her disappearance, even more than the death of his parents, so weighs on Jakob that he finally realizes the ghostly company he keeps may well crowd out any new relationships he tries to form.
We first meet Jakob as a young boy (Robbie Kay) in Poland in 1942, taking piano lessons from big sis Bella (Nina Dobrev), who nervously glances away every time she hears a gunshot outside. Soon, Germans are busting through the family’s doors. Jakob’s mother (Monika Schurmann) ushers him under a table, telling him to keep quiet and that there’s enough food to last him until they return. Then his parents are killed, and Bella disappears. So Jakob starts running and hides himself under some leaves in a nearby forest, which is where a Greek archaeologist named Athos (Rade Serbedgia) finds him.
Athos smuggles Jakob into Greece, where they keep a low profile until the war ends. Athos feels compelled to take care of Jakob, and he’s a nurturing father figure, teaching him Greek and offering a soothing presence in addition to food and shelter. But he’s not exactly confident about the arrangement, confessing to a neighbor that he doesn’t know how to handle such a traumatized boy, even though Athos has experienced tragedy. In one of the film’s more heartbreaking scenes—and there are a lot of them—Jakob throws a tantrum after something reminds him of Bella. Athos, unable to control him and overwhelmed, breaks down in tears.
Writer-director Jeremy Podeswa, adapting a novel by Anne Michaels, doesn’t present these events in a linear fashion, instead focusing mainly on the adult, brooding Jakob (The Hours’ Stephen Dillane) and flashing back to his childhood. After the war, Athos took his “godson” to Canada, moving into a dark, wood-accented apartment in which Jakob is still living decades later when he meets ray-of-sunshine Alex (Pride & Prejudice’s Rosamund Pike).
Alex is pretty, blond, and so sassy she impetuously buys a pair of red sandals because “they’d look so good!” while she and her new beau are running through a rainstorm. For some reason she’s in a hurry to marry the very serious Jakob. What she doesn’t realize is that his past—which he parlayed into a book—wasn’t merely baggage but an obsession. Or is it just who Jakob is?
Alex regards it as the former, sure that he’s boring his friends with talk about the Holocaust and naturally upset when she reads Jakob’s journal, in which he describes his unhappiness and inability to relate to his wife’s “shameless vitality.” Jakob fears that he must live the rest of his life alone, which he does for many years, content with the companionship of his Jewish neighbors and scribbling out his thoughts, a hobby-turned-occupation that Athos urged him to pursue to help heal himself.
Fugitive Pieces is predominantly as melancholy as its main character, when it’s not full-on wrenching: There’s a lot of death here, both natural and at the hands of Nazis, with the latter’s presentation of individual assassinations and not scenes of mass murder making it all the more devastating. Jakob narrates from the book throughout, speaking lines that start out sounding unbearably purple (“when a man dies, his secrets bond like crystals…”) but soon fall in step with Podeswa’s frequent sunny outdoor shots to give the scenes a poetic spin.
Dillane’s Jakob is not the most compelling leading man; more interesting and touching are the flashbacks between the wise (but not Christ-like) Athos and the sad, vulnerable little boy. The film, too, occasionally gets weighed down by its ponderousness—though it’s tough to treat the Holocaust any other way—but despite a few lags, it’s always involving. Controversially, Podeswa amended his original cut of the film, lopping off a significant turn in the book’s plot in favor of a more hopeful, open-ended finale. Michaels’ fans may not agree with the choice, but after the brutality witnessed by both Jakob and the audience, the edit feels like just the right bit of respite for everyone.
1. Randy Jackson classifying a Billy Joel song as “dope.”
2. David Archuchipmunk setting his hips to Aunt Bertha Enjoying Barry Manilow mode as he crooned about his “boo,” who probably works at Disney.
3. Three words: “Cougars for Cook.”
Yikes.
Weirdness aside, the night wasn’t all bad. I actually would have liked to have heard David Archuleta doing a complete version of Joel’s “And So It Goes” instead of the terrible chop-and-paste arrangement he got stuck with. (I admit it: I’m an out-and-proud Billy Joel fan. But even I am not under any delusion that the piano man is “dope.”)
And Roberta Flack’s “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” was an inspired choice for David Cook. Throw in the fact that Syesha’s “If I Ain’t Got You” was her best performance of the night, and you’re left with a bit of a shocking conclusion: The judges actually know what they’re talking about.
Runners-up to David A.’s disastrous “With You” was his crazy-uncomfortable Dan Folerberg cover — you can scrunch those peepers as tight as you want, Davey, but you’re still on the Idol stage and not in some preferable location…say, Mars — and Syesha’s “Fever,” which, to borrow a phrase I heard somewhere, was just weird for me. I expected the budding triple-threat to knock something so theatrically sultry out of the park. Instead, we got odd runs, melody changes, and a chair that girlfriend talked up like she was going to do cartwheels off of but really was more akin to a wooden pocket for her non-mike-holding hand.
But at least she didn’t get a “Seniors for Syesha” banner. That we know of.
David Cook fans
Weekend of May 11, 2008
Box Office
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| 1 | 1 | Iron Man | 2 | $50.5M | $177.1M | $12.3k | 4111 |  92% |
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| 2 | new | Speed Racer | 1 | $20.2M | $20.2M | $5.6k | 3606 |  36% |
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| 3 | new | What Happens in Vegas | 1 | $20M | $20M | $6.2k | 3215 | 27% |
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| 4 | 2 | Made of Honor | 2 | $7.6M | $26.3M | $2.8k | 2734 | 12% |
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| 5 | 3 | Baby Mama | 3 | $5.8M | $40.4M | $2.2k | 2627 | 60% |
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| 6 | 5 | Forgetting Sarah Marshall | 4 | $3.8M | $50.7M | $1.6k | 2376 | 85% |
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| 7 | 4 | Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay | 3 | $3.2M | $30.7M | $1.4k | 2264 | 55% |
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| 8 | 6 | Forbidden Kingdom | 4 | $1.9M | $48.3M | $1.1k | 1724 | 61% |
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| 9 | 7 | Nim’s Island | 6 | $1.3M | $44.3M | $0.8k | 1601 | 48% |
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| 10 | 41 | Redbelt | 2 | $1.1M | $1.2M | $0.8k | 1379 | 71% |
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| 11 | 8 | Prom Night | 5 | $1.1M | $42.8M | $0.7k | 1465 | 9% |
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| 12 | 9 | 21 | 7 | $0.8M | $80.4M | $0.9k | 978 | 31% |
Source: Rotten Tomatoes
…Thandie Newton as Condoleezza Rice in W? Really?
A visual aid:
The actress
The character
Director Oliver Stone is giving the rest of the Bush administration an extreme makeover, too — Ellen Burstyn and Jeffrey Wright are playing Babs Bush and Colin Powell (though Powell is, admittedly, a dashing figure), and of course Elizabeth Banks will be First Lady, albeit in kinda-creepy makeup, if Entertainment Weekly’s new cover is any indication.
Not sure prettying up the players will make anyone want to relive an ugly story, though.
Go, Speed Racer…please go.
From its pedigree to its previews, the big-screen adaptation of the classic anime cartoon Speed Racer has had summer popcorn-munchers all atwitter. Sure, it’s a family flick. But it also marks the return of the Wachowski Brothers, their first directorial effort since the final chapter of The Matrix trilogy bowed in 2003. Some of the same crew that helped create that series’ much-quoted look and otherworldly movement would be on board, along with an A-list cast including Susan Sarandon, Christina Ricci, and, most impressively, Emile Hirsch as Speed.
Except – well, does anyone actually remember The Matrix Reloaded or Revolutions? They kinda sucked.
The realization will hit you like a thud of Neo-ian philosophy before Speed Racer even hits the halfway mark. The film begins to sputter not long after we’re introduced to a young Speed (Nicholas Elia), a cute kid too busy idolizing his brother, Rex (Scott Porter), a champion racer, and getting googly-eyed over classmate Trixie (Ariel Winter) to pay much attention to school.
That’s OK, though, because racing’s in his blood: His Pops (John Goodman) designs cars and managed Rex while Mom (Sarandon) coos over her boys’ talents. Even after Rex is killed in a daredevil cross-country race, the family – which later regrettably includes younger brother Spritle (Paulie Litt), his pet monkey, and Racer Motors mechanic Sparky (Kick Gurry), who seems to live with them for no reason – cautiously supports Speed’s desire to compete.
Once Speed flash-forwards from a joyful kid into a traumatized if determined adult, the Wachowskis seem to abandon the idea of an imaginative, fun script in favor of leaden exposition and crazy visuals. At least in that last regard, they succeed: Speed Racer isn’t just generic eye candy, it’s optical Pop Rocks. The film is set God knows where and when – again, digestible story details aren’t the brothers’ strong point – but the look is George Jetson and the Chocolate Factory, all hypersaturated colors and futuristic landscapes. (Except for the Racers’ home, whose decor tends toward the Brady Bunch-ian.)
The races, naturally, are where the art direction really dazzles: Speed’s white, lacquered Mach 5 car is Bat-cool enough. But it moves like the ghost of a ninja, taking turns horizontally and passing through competitors as if they were vapor. The tracks themselves are not so much oval as everywhere, roller-coaster paths that defy physics and appear to be made exclusively of LEDs.
And just as your brain struggles to take in all the frenetic, brightly-colored action, the Wachowskis add layers: There isn’t just a foreground and background. The heads of spectators and commentators float across the screen and over each other during a race, sometimes mingled with flashbacks telling us what’s going on in Speed’s head. It’s often too much to absorb, but it’s still a blast.
The script itself is just as overloaded, but compared to watching an explosion of imagery, parsing the story’s details just feels like work. A multitude of villains, most notably Royalton (Roger Allam), the head of a giant corporation who wants to sponsor Speed, are introduced quickly and confusingly, and the main players are given zero personality: Ricci and Hirsch approach human-like depth when their characters are gently flirting with each other, but otherwise they’re as lifeless as the other one-trait roles. (Pops is suspicious, Trixie and Mom go “Yay!”, Speed drones about racing for Rex’s honor, Spritle is sidekick-annoying.)
Monkey humor, shocking though it may be, doesn’t work here, and neither does a root-for-the-hero plot when the stakes aren’t exactly made clear – not to mention the hero himself not being terribly charismatic. Speed’s mother tells him that when he drives, “it’s beautiful, and inspiring, and everything that art should be.” It’s an unfortunate reminder of everything Speed Racer is not.
