A Speedy evening

Of all the millions of hours of cartoons that I've watched, I've not aggregated even a minute of the totally hopeless 'Speed Racer'. With the Chinese dude in the shady outfit and the cheesiest background score with the even cheesier tag-line of 'Go speed racer, go!', this has to be amongst the worst cartoon series ever shown on Cartoon Network... (but its a bittuva cult I'm told)

EVEN THEN, I could not miss the movie version of the cartoon, by The Wachowski Brothers (of The Matrix - God level - fame). So I trekked to local PVR Juhu on Saturday to watch the movie with ATM.

As I was waiting around in line for the tickets, an American dude walked up to me and said "Yo, wassup". I was rather taken aback by the familiarity assumed, but gave a smile and returned the greeting. And then, after staring at me for like 3 seconds, the guy says "You look very familiar". Now, this was getting kinda awkward. Still I managed to keep smiling and crack a silly joke saying "Who do I look like, John Cusack?". I don't quite know why I said that, maybe I was picturing myself in 1408 :-D

But then, came the whole point of the discussion.......

He asked me which movie I was watching.. I proudly said "Speed Racer!"
"Do you recognize me..?" (!!!) I was like what the hell is with this guy!?!
"Have you seen The Forbidden Kingdom", he quipped.
"Why of course!" I replied, having just caught the movie with Abhishek, the marketing dude, the weekend before.
"I was in that movie! You remember the first scene, the guy with the black t-shirt who Jackie Chan hits on the back..? I was him!"
I thought back.... Of course I didn't remember him, but I had to say "OFFF COURSEEE!! Man, it feels great to meet a star!!" The poor guy was beaming with pride now. Finally someone had recognized him it seemed. I looked around for a pen, for an autograph, but unfortunately there were none in sight, or I could have made him even happier!

Then we said our goodbyes, he headed for some bollywood flick and I bought our tickets for Speed Racer.

The movie was quite fun. Loaaads of action sequences as you can expect. Also a story woven around morality, staying true to yourself, etc., again expected from the Buddhist bros. The movie has this whole cartoon feel about it and looks really neat and colourful. Thankfully, the soundtrack from the cartoon itself is used very sparingly. The music for the car races is fantabulous! The movie's a tad long though, with the first break coming after 1 1/4 hour! Nevertheless, it was a good watch and I suggest you catch it if you have nothing else to do this weekend.

After the movie, we rounded off the evening with a sumptuous dinner at Mahesh Lunch Home (the best sea food in the city!! Must try!!) and some delectable ice-cream at Naturals.