‘Speed Racer’ doesn’t fire on all cylinders, but boys will lap it up

TIME WAS, I could spend an entire Saturday morning eating Froot Loops.

I'd fill a large container with cereal and milk, and deplete and refill the bowl until the milk had turned thick and pink. Then I'd drink the syrupy elixir.

Ahhh. Just thinking about it makes me  . . . vomit.

You get older, the sweet tooth abates. Or the dentist grinds it down and glues a cap over it.

And your tastes change. The idea of plain Shredded Wheat does not seem so appalling. I'm not saying I'd go so far as to eat anything called Mueslix, which sounds like something you expel from your lungs during a bout with the flu, but a bowl of ordinary Cheerios suits me fine.

Which brings us (at last, you say) to "Speed Racer" a 140-minute, candy-colored, empty-calorie extravaganza you have to be no more than 12 years old to enjoy.

It's from the Wachowski brothers (I think "siblings" is maybe a better word, based on what we've read about Larry) who brought us the gloomy, pea-green dystopia of "The Matrix"

Their "Speed Racer" is another mostly digital, tricked-out world, but it replaces the darkness of "Matrix" with a blindingly sunny disposition and possibly the most uncomplicated movie hero ever created.

Speed Racer (Emile Hirsch) just loves to race, goshdarnit. He comes from a racing family - dad (John Goodman) loves to build cars, mom (Susan Sarandon, in Barbara Billingsley's wardrobe) cooks pancakes so that the boys don't get hungry when they're building cars or racing, and younger brother Spritle (Paulie Litt) wants to grow up to be just like Speed.

The only shadow across the optimistic Racer family is the death of older brother Rex, who left Team Racer for mysterious reasons and perished in a dangerous road rally.

It had something to do, we gradually learn, with creepy corporate interests intent on sullying the sport of racing with fixed outcomes and product-pushing. The independence and purity of Team Racer are a threat to these greedy magnates, who send mercenary drivers out to defeat/harm Speed in a series of races.

These races are the big tent in the three ring circus that is "Speed Racer" - psychedelic, surreal, noisy, with a happy suspension of any laws related to physics or gravity. The Nintendo generation will probably eat this up, but whirling POV left me feeling the numbness of a pinched fun nerve (another sign of aging).

Between races, the Wachowskis spend lavish amounts of time on a plot about corporate proxy fights and shareholder stakes, one that seems deliberately incomprehensible.

Don't take this seriously, the Wachowskis say with a wink. Have a goofy time. Enjoy the cartoon villains, tongue-in-cheek performances (Christina Ricci is a pert Trixie), the monkey flinging his feces in the face of a bad guy.

Yes, the Wachowskis have retained, from the old TV series, Chim Chim the Team Racer monkey, on hand for comic relief.

For many of you, he will offer neither comedy nor relief.

"Get that monkey!" somebody yells, midway though the movie.

Translation, for those who don't eat Froot Loops anymore: Elvis has left the building. *

Produced by Joel Silver, Andy and Larry Wachowski and Grant Hill, written and directed by Andy and Larry Wachowski, music by Michael Giacchino, distributed by Warner Bros.