Speed Racer

And he's not THAT old.

Heck, with Rocky Balboa (62), Indiana Jones IV (65) and Die Hard IV (52), The Hoff (55) would fit right in with the current trend of a crop of older-than-an-action-star-has-any-right-to-be.

Somebody call his agent.
 
Now that's pretty darn cool, but... if I'm getting a Trans Am, it's gonna be this one:

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I think Knight Rider reached its zenith (or its nadir; for anything involving the Hoffmeister, the two states are basically interchangeable) when they pasted a little dime-store stick-on goatee to his chin, equipped a big black semi-truck with the trademark whooshy-flashy scanner front-piece, and introduced him as the original "Garth" Knight, driving an evil intelligent vehicle, going up against KITT and the "good" Michael Knight (his goodness discernable by his goatee-free chin...)*

Double your Hasselhoffs, for double your pleasure!

It's taken almost this many years, for my faith in the basic goodness of humanity to recover.




*It wouldn't have been quite as awful, if from shot to shot the goatee wasn't changing its position on 'Garth's' chin. Damn thing was crawling around his face like a woolly caterpillar...
 
Sad Max said:
*It wouldn't have been quite as awful, if from shot to shot the goatee wasn't changing its position on 'Garth's' chin. Damn thing was crawling around his face like a woolly caterpillar...
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Dude, now you're makin' me want to netflix that episode... :D
 
Yeah, I guess Pontiac lost the contract, huh?

but looks like they did take my advice:

Greynolds says David Hasselhoff (who, last we heard, was in talks to reprise his Michael Knight role)
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Dont hassle the Hoff.
 
Mark Harris said:
Yeah, I guess Pontiac lost the contract, huh?
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Probably more likely that they don't make anything appropriate. There isn't a firebird on the market right now, so -- what would they use? A G6?

Makes little sense -- look how "Transformers" was basically an ad for the new Camaro, so why wouldn't GM just dress up the same thing with a big screaming chicken on the hood, paint it black, and maintain SOME sense of relevance to the original?

As David says, why take a "fan favorite" and then destroy what the fans liked about it? When they remade Doctor Who for this current season, they kept the Tardis as a Police Call Box, instead of trying to make the new Tardis out of, say, a port-a-potty or something...
 
Okay...sue me...I kind of liked this movie. It's getting trashed by the critics, and I can see how an unsuspecting viewer might feel like their eyeballs had been raped, but knowing what it was going in I had fun watching this. It's basically a live-action cartoon. The story is simple but it gets the job done. The first 15 minutes are pretty good, and the Wachowski's really push things narratively by bouncing between several different timelines for a while. After that there are some butt squirmingly lame family scenes and dumb monkey hijinks, but around the midway point I think the family dynamic starts clicking and the racing plot starts working. The racing scenes are beyond insane, and after a while, when racers start throwing live beehives at each other, you just have to submit to the lunacy. Or not. Just know that if you have absolutely zero tolerance for this kind of thing then don't come within ten feet of a theater playing this. If I had seen this movie when I was ten years old I would have creamed my pants.
 
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I enjoyed the racing sequences, and some of the storytelling devices, but I was confused by some of the plot elements... I just wish they would have told the story more simply... after all it is a simple story... I feel like they had subplots for the sake of subplots... I won't watch it again, however I didn't feel I wasted my money or time... it's worth seeing for the racing sequences alone... and I did like the animated feel of everything, very different.
 
Brandon Rice said:
I enjoyed the racing sequences, and some of the storytelling devices, but I was confused by some of the plot elements... I just wish they would have told the story more simply... after all it is a simple story... I feel like they had subplots for the sake of subplots... I won't watch it again, however I didn't feel I wasted my money or time... it's worth seeing for the racing sequences alone... and I did like the animated feel of everything, very different.
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I must be in the minority of people who didn't find the story the least bit confusing. I think the weakest part of the film is the section after the opening when Royalton is wooing Speed. This could have been cut in half. The only moment that was somewhat confusing was the Asian guy's first scene when he's being beat up by the gangsters. You're kind of thrown into the middle of it without explanation, but it's pretty easy by the context to figure out what's going on. Another weakness of the film is that they didn't do much with Speed's relationship with Trixie. There is no conflict there and it's boring. This is actually a weakness of the Wachowski's. They don't do romantic conflict. They usually just have two characters who are meant to be together, (Speed and Trixie, Neo and Trinity), but few physical or emotional barriers to their coupling.
 
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