So much for Peter Bart’s pet dead horse about the untraversable gap between ticket buyers and film reviewers––Iron Man, so far the year’s best reviewed film, is also thus far 2008’s fastest moneymaker. The critic/audience sync continued this past weekend with Speed Racer. It takes a rare film to unite critics with as disparate a sensibility as Anthony Lane and Armond White in common vitriol; it’s almost unthinkable that the same critically-despised film would fail to appeal to the masses.

“Speed Racer kills cinema,” went White’s fuming, unusable pullquote. But does it? It would be wishful thinking to assume that the average ticket buyer actually cares about “cinema”, never mind the death thereof, but it seems clear to me that the audience’s failure to care about this particular movie could have lasting repercussions for those of us who do take cinema seriously. After jump, you’ll find five reasons why, love the movie or hate it, this bombing could potentially be Bad For Movies on the whole––and one reason why it might be kind of good. As usual, feel free to tell me why I’m a moron in the comments.

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