To no one's surprise, "Speed Racer" has turned into the summer's first flop. In its opening week it raked in only $20.2 million , playing in 3,606 theaters. That’s a much lower than expected figure and nowhere near the $50.5 that "Iron Man" earned in its second week. Since the Wachowski Brothers spent a reported $180 million on the film, it's going down as a big disappointment.

I think one of the biggest problems it had is that while the PG-rated movie was obviously aimed at a young audience, the audience that grew up watching the 1960s Japanese cartoon is actually much older. Young kids had no connection to the source material. Parents taking kids of this generation probably went just to see
something, rather than in response to any request from their children.
And Emile Hirsch's superb breakout performance came in "Into the Wild," which wasn't in a family film, so kids aren't familiar with his work yet. That and the fact that the film was too long, had a flimsy story and relied too much of special effects.

Oddly, Oscar winner Susan Sarandon, who played the mother of the title
character, is competing with her longtime significant other, Tim Robbins's movie "Noise," an intriguing and funny black comedy, which also opened this
past week(albeit in limited release).

It'll be interesting to see how the new "Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian" does in attracting families this coming weekend. The first film did nearly $1 billion worldwide and it has a new lead actor, Ben Barnes, who will be our guest on REEL TALK this weekend.