Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #36735 in DVD
• Brand: LIONS GATE HOME ENT.
• Released on: 2008-05-06
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: AC-3, Animated, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .25 pounds
• Running time: 66 minutes

Amazon.com
The venerable Japanese animated series Speed Racer zooms into the not-so-distant future in this breezy American update. Speed himself is nowhere to be seen in this hourlong feature (he appears in an subsequent episode of the Nicktoons series), but his son, X Racer, is on hand, and showing that he's a chip off the old man's block by holding down the top spot at his family's Racing Academy. But the arrival of an orphan named Speed with even greater racing skills challenges not only X's position at the Academy, but everything he knows about his long-absent father. On the plus side, Speed Racer: The Next Generation honors its history by including elements from the original series like the Mach 5 and Speed's brother Spritle Racer (voiced here by Peter Fernandez, who also played Speed for the American dub of the original series), as well as a mechanized Chim-Chim. But it's also unnecessarily complicated in its plotting, and the dialogue is awfully trite (though the original didn't win any prizes in that department). The animation is also disappointingly mediocre and sterile, which may be the kiss of death for both fans of the original series and younger viewers looking for state-of-the-art craftsmanship. The DVD includes a making-of featurette which looks at the challenges presented in updating the series for a new audience, and a fun Virtual Racing game that emulates the track at the Academy. Text bios for the main characters are also included. --Paul Gaita

Customer Reviews

Fantastic for kids and parents !
Speed Racer the Next Generation - The Beginning is great!
My son LOVES the TV show. That's what it is all about. Entertaining
kids. Good, clean fun with some socially redeeming value. I was a teen
when the original Speed Racer show hit American TV. I go into while
babysitting. It made a lot of sense to do a "next" generation.
We also appreciate how they do the animation style. Speed Racer anime
style. Highly recommend this DVD (and the TV show!)

This is a terrible, extremely low budget show
I watched the first episode of this show on Nick this weekend, and it was a flat-out embarrassment. The show looks like a homemade web cartoon...and honestly, that's an insult to some homemade web cartoons. The fact that a major Hollywood summer blockbuster is backed by an animated series that is this poor is just a shame.

I find it hard to believe that anyone could give this series a 5 star review. I'm sure there are some others who will enjoy it more than I did, but 5 stars is just out of the question with something this poorly done.

Reminds me of when I was young!
Great movie for young kids. Reminds me of when I was a kid too!