Cars go crash. Cars go smash. Cars go real fast. Cars zoom out from the screen. That’s the pitch for Nascar 3D and that’s about all you’re going to get.
Part infomercial, part historical documentary, all in 3-D, Nascar 3D is best seen as a spectacle, something that exists for its format rather than its content. There is some loose storytelling happening in the film, in which director Simon Wincer recreates the origins of Nascar going all the way back to alcohol runners during the prohibition era and bringing it into the present-day pandemonium these high-tech machines evoke today.
Kiefer Sutherland is along for the ride as the token celebrity narrator that seems to be a common theme amongst IMAX films. Perhaps had his lines not been so corny, I would have been able to buy him more, but I kept thinking that Jack Bauer, his character on TV’s 24 was on the other end of the phone.
From the opening credits, Nascar 3D is declared a Warner Bros. film and for the next 40 minutes the movie inundates you with various forms of corporate synergy at its most blatant. For example, in one scene describing all the nifty gadgets that make up the transport trucks, there’s a list of items that include everything from ramps to computers to AOL. No, they don’t have the Internet. It’s specifically AOL. Now Nascar is a sport that is all about sponsors. There’s logos plastered on every inch of a race car. But when a company uses a movie that people have already paid good money to see to plug their other products, that bothers me. Here it feels as though Warner, AOL or whatever they’re calling themselves these days, is trying to validate itself, pushing its own product ahead of everything and everyone else. But hey, it’s just another way to have advertising creep into every consumable artifact we have now.
But then again, Nascar 3D is, well 3-D, so it makes up for it a little. Like other IMAX 3-D films, such as Ghosts of the Abyss, this one isn’t that corny red and white stuff like in Spy Kids 3-D. Rather it’s a rich, full-colour effect that mimics reality as much as a two dimensional screen can. While the race scenes are impressive, the times when the third dimension is fullest is off the track and in the historical recreations. The opening shot of the film is on a wooded back country road. The leaves, gravel and trees all sway and hop, pulling you right into the action. The most contrived sequence in the film involves what appears to be a CG tire flying off of a crashing race car and progressively towards the screen until it virtually falls on top of you. Even with the five second lead time for this shot, the flying tire still sent my heart for a lap around the track.
On a purely spectacle level, Nascar 3D is unlike anything you’ve seen. As the title implies, it really is an experience. However, 3-D remains novel for only so long. By the end I was still admiring the pictures, but I was also squirming in my seat from the lacklustre storytelling and AOL propaganda. Nascar has a big history. To sum it up neatly in under an hour with a whole bunch of nifty effects as a distraction, just doesn’t do history any justice.
Nascar 3D Gallery
Trailer
