Mom and Pops Racer (Susan Sarandon and John Goodman) speak to their son (Emile Hirsch, in the car) as Sparky (Kick Gurry) looks on in Speed Racer.

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What should have been a fast 90-minute spin around the track, Speed Racer runs for two hours and 15 minutes … but seems like seven hours.

There’s simply too much going on in Speed Racer, a live-action version of the series created by anime pioneer Tatsuo Yoshida. Filmed in eye-poppingly garish neon colors, the computer-generated race track sequences wind up having all the intimacy and human feeling of a video game gone wild as cars careen and leap over one another, sometimes roaring along sideways, sometimes crashing and burning. Yet in all the mayhem there’s little sense of any of the competitors save for Speed Racer, whose family legacy is fast cars.

The results are sensory overload to the max. The under-14 set at a preview screening were catatonically quiet for most of the movie, save for a few slapstick moments, the inevitable life-defining race at the end and the scenes involving a pet chimpanzee.

Sad to say, the chimp easily steals the film from such generally reliable actors as John Goodman, Susan Sarandon, Emile Hirsch (so affecting as the doomed foolish young man of the underappreciated Into the Wild — so cardboard here in the title role) and Christina Ricci. The chimp is the only one who is not overwhelmed by the movie’s unnaturally super-saturated colors. Both Goodman and Sarandon pull out the emotional stops in individual soul-searching moments with their son, Speed. But those moments, character-illuminating as they are, bog down an already overlong film. Alas Ricci, as the girlfriend of Hirsch’s Speed Racer, has nothing much to do except look worried as he zooms around the track.

Speed Racer was filmed in Germany with a cast that provides an odd mix of American, British and Australian accents. It was written and directed by brothers Larry and Andy Wachowski, who had worldwide audiences on the edge of their seats in the first Matrix movie, then had diminishing returns in their two follow-up Matrix adventures where they dropped the ball.

Unfortunately, despite all its racetrack pyrotechnics, Speed Racer never quite catches fire. That’s apparent from the start, a dizzying flashback-flashforward jumble that attempts to introduce too much, becoming too “where-the-heck-are-we?” confusing. It zips back and forth between Speed’s recent past, when he daydreams in school of following in the footsteps of his beloved older brother, Rex Racer; has his dreams shattered when Rex is accused of rigging races and dies in a fiery suicide crash; then begins his own racing career with much anxiety.

The point of the script — remaining true to oneself despite daunting odds — kicks in when the smooth-talking, slippery E.P. Arnold Royalton (Roger Allam), the overbearing head of a huge conglomerate, woos Speed in hopes of having him join his corporate racing team. Anyone over the age of 8 will be able to see through the phoniness of this guy very early … and if you can’t, he has a scenery-chewing scene later in the film where Royalton spells out to Speed the ugly facts of his racing philosophy — merely a means of achieving power and money through races that are rigged. If Speed won’t play ball, he vows to destroy not only Speed, but his family.

Royalton has his own team of cartoonish thug enforcers to do his dirty work. In bowler hats and 1930s garb, this outlandish crew seems to have been recruited from a Dick Tracy comic strip. They’d be comical, if it weren’t for the tank of hungry piranhas they keep as a threat to their victims. When they first turn up one wonders, “Who are these guys and how did they get into this movie?”

In the background is the shadowy, hooded Racer X (Matthew Fox of TV’s Lost), a sort of superhero who turns up for the rescue at life-threatening turns. You may guess Racer X’s true identity not long into his first appearance, but the Wachowskis wisely toss a curve ball for some second guessing.

There are a couple of snazzy-looking do-or-die car races, but by the end of the film, a certain sameness has set in … except for a wild ride through an ice cave. Speed Racer’s graphics are impressive at first — characters slide across the foreground of scenes to add to our knowledge about what’s occurring in the background. But some of these characters are buffoonish and eventually the graphics seem a conceit that’s overused

Not the chimp, though. There’s never enough of him in Speed Racer, a latter-day Cheetah who works in tandem with his little human cohort in mischief, Speed’s young brother Spritle (Paulie Litt) who is an odd mix of cute and overbearing. Too bad the grownups aren’t as interesting or as much fun as the monkey shines.

Despite the emphasis on gaudy graphics, the film’s most amazing special effect is 61-year-old Sarandon, who plays Speed’s mother and looks to be no more than 35. Now that’s movie magic.

**Speed Racer

Starring: Emile Hirsch, Christina Ricci, John Goodman, Susan Sarandon, Matthew Fox, Roger Allam, Rain.

Rated: PG, contains a surprising amount of violence.

mjanuson@projo.com