I was never a huge Speed Racer fan as a kid. The old cartoons were entertaining distractions, but my interests were dedicated to other, more modern franchises. When the Wachowski's "Speed Racer" flopped in US theaters, a friend and I went to an early afternoon showing at a budget theater for the sole purpose of mocking it. I left the theater that day stunned that I had so much fun watching the film (there ended up being no mockery as well) and decided to give some of the original episodes a shot. I still can't say I'm a Speed Racer fan, aside from the live-action film, but without a doubt, I know garbage when I see it, and "Speed Racer The Next Generation: Comet Run The Movie" is a giant pile of it.

Everything about this program screams of being a cheap cash in on the live-action film and subsequent renewed interest in the original animated series. The Comet Run collects a three-part episode arc from this new TV series. I was unfamiliar with the back-story, but within minutes, a reference was made to this Speed being the son of the original Speed Racer. As uninspired as this sounds, it only gets worse. Speed is trying to perfect the engine of his Mach 6, a trillionaire(!) environmentalist wagers his entire company to enter a roadrace due to his confidence in his seemingly unstoppable ecocar. All this takes a third of the 60-minute runtime to unfold and it's painful. I can only imagine any young kids watching this on TV being disappointed by watching an episode of plot exposition, I know would have been if this was on the air 20 years ago.

The remaining forty minutes aren't much better, filled with the races you'd expect from Speed Racer (minus all the wit and charm). If this completely unoriginal storytelling weren't bad enough, the show looks and sounds terrible. A lot of people give "Family Guy" flack for looking poorly animated, but compared to this program, "Family Guy" looks like Fantasia. I've seen certain insurance commercials sport more original and stylish animation, than this collection of entry-level Flash animation. Backgrounds are dull and flat, and character design is a basic as you can get. The one animated element that stands out are the CGI rendered cars, which end up looking more absurd amongst the rest of the drivel. The guys in marketing aren't stupid though and they realize the show looks like garbage, so the case ends up getting covered in images of slick looking 3D cars; even more misleading is the rendering of Speed on the cover. Bad form in my opinion.

The other critical element of animated fair, sound design fairs a bit better, but not by much. Every voice actor sounds overly excited to deliver lines and this grates on the nerves quickly. The annoying generic music that permeates the show doesn't do much for increasing the likeability of the show as well.

The bottom line is this program was a waste of my time. I know its marketed to kids, but there is so many better avenues of entertainment parents can spend their money on than this tacky marketing piece. If this was one of three story arcs selected from the series to release on DVD, I can only imagine the quality of the remaining episodes that weren't deemed worthy for release. My advice, NO! SPEED RACER! NO!

Despite the ugly, laughable animation quality, the actual video quality is quite good. The 1.33:1 full screen format appears to be the original aspect ratio and aside from some very noticeable dot-crawl on the opening credits, reproduces colors (I will give the series credit for being colorful) with rich clarity.

The Audio

The 5.1 Dolby Digital English track is quite dull, most assuredly a result of the cheap sound design. The track is mostly front heavy, with the surrounds being used to pipe in that terrible background music. Everything else comes across clearly. Spanish and English subtitles are also provided.

The Extras

A trailer gallery of other releases is the sole bonus on the disc, while a 1:64 scale Mach 6 is included in the cardboard container that houses the actual disc case. It's not the best quality toy, but in all reality is likely to entertain a kid more than the program itself.

This new series is a marketing piece and a slapdash effort to boot. For the same price you'd spend on this disc, you can get any of the four the individual Speed Racer cartoons, which, while still not my favorite thing in the world, are infinitely more well made and worthy of you or your kids' time. Personally, if your kids are a bit older and have the attention span, I'd say give the live-action movie a shot, it's just as cheap and is truly a piece of visual beauty. It's also got 100x more heart than this travesty. Skip It.