Speed Racer opens Friday, and it's the first Wachowski brothers movie to carry a lower rating than R. The creators of the Sly Stallone-Antonio Banderas movie, Assassins, are catering to the same crowd of pre-schoolers and stoners who found fascinating the overly colorful antics of Teletubbies, The Backyardigans and Yo Gabba Gabba. In fact, the biggest complaint of critics thus far has been that the movie is so colorful it looks like Rainbow Brite's ass exploded after a trip to White Castle with Harold and Kumar.

Included in the 36 percent Rotten Tomatoes score for Speed Racer is the New York Observer review by Rex Reed. For some reason, I thought he had retired to the Winona Ryder Home for Aging Film Fanatics, but he's still out there and God love him, he's as bitchy as ever. Reed was one of my favorite critics to read growing up. He was completely useless from a critical perspective, but for hyperbole-filled entertainment purposes, I don't think he has an equal. For him, it's personal, and some of the things he has said about actors should not have escaped the lips of the man who played Myron Breckinridge.

I didn't think Speed Racer would be any good (the cartoon was even more annoying than Pokemon, and just as seizure-inducing) but Reed makes it sound apocalyptic. "I can sit through just about anything, but I draw the line at two hours and 15 minutes of fuchsia vomit," he complains. He further complains that Christina Ricci's Trixie character is "dressed like a pinafored Finger-Me doll and looking like Little Lulu." (This is a complaint?) Lastly, he hangs himself by saying "this abomination by the creatively challenged Wachowski brothers is a train wreck so bad that words literally fail me." That should have been the end of his review. It's part of the first line.

I think Reed is pissed that the movie's colors don't match, that they used Rogers and Hart standards in a CGI extravaganza, and that Speed's brother is named Rex. This may sound like a stretch, but go read that review and tell me I'm wrong. That pan is probably more entertaining than the movie it's critiquing, but at least I read it for the same amount Reed spent to see Speed Racer: Nothing. Reed's demanding combat pay for sitting through it. Like I said, for hyperbole-filled entertainment purposes...no equal.