Considering the Fast & Furious franchise has been around for 18 years, we’re surprised that there hasn’t been a kid-oriented animated series until now. But with Fast & Furious: Spy Racers, the franchise has its very own animated spinoff to add to the canon. Is it any good?
Opening Shot: In the Gulf of Mexico a sleek ship is being manned by some henchmen. They get boarded by motorcycle racers who blow some things up and steal a very expensive car.
The Gist: Back in Los Angeles, a group of amateur gearheads, led by Tony Toretto (Tyler Posey) are challenged to a street race by a lunkheaded frenemy of theirs named Mitch (Jimmy Tatro), and we see Tony try to beat Mitch’s rocket-engine hot rod and fail, mainly because a fuel pump hose came loose. “Nothing a little gum can’t fix” says mechanical whiz Cisco Renaldo (Jorge Diaz). The other members of the crew are Margaret “Echo” Pearl (Charlet Chung) and tech genius Frostee Benson (Luke Youngblood).
After that race, Tony’s cousin Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) comes for a visit, and when he gets kidnapped, the crew chases after the van that he’s in. They find out it’s just a test; a government organization Dom has worked with needs street racers to infiltrate a gang of thieves called SH1FT3R. Ms. Nowhere (Renée Elise Goldsberry), the high-strung operational leader, needs them to find a tryout race in order to infiltrate the gang and see how they’re getting away with robbing high-tech moguls of expensive cars and other gear.
The crew’s operation to get into the tryout race works too well, and Ms. Nowhere almost cancels the operation. But as Dom told Tony, “A Toretto doesn’t follow the rules; he follows his gut,” and Tony does just that as he gets what he needs to enter the race — a digitally-coded car and an entry in their retinal scan database. Both schemes involve tricking Mitch, who isn’t exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer.
Our Take: If you like fast cars and playing video games with fast cars, you’ll probably like Fast & Furious: Spy Racers. If you like smart dialogue, well-done animation and some semblance of story, then you’ll probably hate Fast & Furious: Spy Racers. We are more or less in the second camp.
As and extension of the Fast & Furious film franchise, we weren’t expecting Spy Racers to be heavy on story. We figured it would be a kid-friendly series of races and chases and explosions. And the first episode gave us just that, with at least 2/3 of the 23 minutes taken up by action. And the cars look great, with a lot of creativity and detail.
But the rest of the show is a disaster. It feels like DreamWorks Animation had enough budget to sink into developing the CGI for the cars or the human characters, but not both. So they sunk the money into designing and animating the cars and left the human characters looking like something out of an early-’00s CGI-based series, with stiff facial expressions and herky-jerky motion. It makes the overall feel of the series look cheap and thrown together, despite the detailed look of the cars. Backgrounds look fairly simplified, too, leading to that thrown-together feeling.
And we get that when you’re animating an extension of a franchise whose star is Vin Diesel (an executive producer of this series), acting isn’t high on the priority list, plus the fact that voice acting for kids’ animation is by definition less subtle than it would be for live action. But it feels like everyone, including the usually-reliable Goldsberry, have been directed to take it up even more notches than they might have by default, making every line feel like it’s delivered like a punch line instead of a line of dialogue. There are a few good quips in the script, but they’re delivered in such an over-the-top manner it feels wrings out all the funny they may have had.
We’re actually surprised by all of this; DreamWorks Animation-produced series usually display not only visually interesting animation techniques, but usually has smarter, more naturally-delivered dialogue. We figured they’d make a F&F cartoon that was at least as smart as the franchise it comes from. But it looks like they couldn’t even reach that level.
What Age Group Is This For?: The series is rated TV-Y7-FV; the “FV” is for “Fantasy violence,” and we see some of that from the jump, with the master racers from SH1FT3R blowing things up while stealing that car. So we’re figuring that this show is for kids 10 and up.
Parting Shot: Master racer/thief Layla Gray (Camille Ramsey) decides to jump into the tryout race, and slides in next to Tony, whom she thinks is Mitch. “Hi, Mitch,” she says.Sleeper Star: The cars. The animators have done a fantastic job of making detailed, creative-looking cars that you wouldn’t likely see in the live-action movies.
Most Pilot-y Line: Tony tells Frostee to “hack faster” to get his picture in the retinal scan database. Frostee has the appropriate response, as he tells the knocked-out, man-bunned computer guy they tied up. “I mean, do your people treat you like this? Hack faster! They have no idea what we do!”
Our Call: SKIP IT. Fast & Furious: Spy Racers looks like a video game, which would be great if you were sitting in front of it with a controller in your hand. But since it’s a series and not a game, you’ll likely shut it off and turn on your favorite racing game instead.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company.com, RollingStone.com, Billboard and elsewhere.
Stream Fast & Furious: Spy Racers On Netflix
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January 01, 2020 at 05:00AM
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Stream It Or Skip It: 'Fast & Furious: Spy Racers' On Netflix, An Animated Extension Of The Hit Movie Franchise - Decider
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