Fast and Furious: Spy Racers
FAST AND FURIOUS: SPY RACERS - NETFLIX
DreamWorks Animation has been steadily producing children's content on NETFLIX for the better part of six years!; their latest outing takes viewers to the streets of Los Angeles with a family-friendly spin-off show based on the Fast & The Furious franchise.
Fast & Furious: Spy Racers follows speed-crazy Tony Toretto — voiced by Tyler Posey (Truth or Dare, Teen Wolf) — the cousin of Vin Diesel's Dominic Toretto, and his crew. Dom recruits them with pernickety secret agent Ms Nowhere (Renee Elise Goldsberrry) to infiltrate SH1FT3R, a crime-loving group of elite street racers led by the charismatic Shashi Dhar (Manish Dayal) and his unpredictable second-in-command Layla Gray (Camille Ramsey).
Fast & Furious: Spy Racers wears its influences from the big screen on its sleeves, with exciting, fast-paced races in a variety of locations — complete with weapons and enhancements reminiscent of Wacky Racers or Cel Damage — big explosions, ridiculous action — such as a rocket-boosted car stopping a train from going off of a cliff — and world-ending stakes that fit comfortably with the rest of the series. Anyone hoping the plot would diverge from the franchise's recent fare, such as the recent Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, will not be happy to hear that the episode-to-episode plot mostly revolves around Macguffin chasing for the "keys" to ridiculously powerful technology to keep the action set pieces going.
The "spy" part of Spy Racers revolves less around planning and espionage like Ocean's Eleven and more around high-tech gadgets and gizmos to keep an eye on the bad guys and hack anything they need to, complete with a secret base that is every kid's dream room. In most missions, the team fails to follow orders and lets SH1FT3R get one step closer to their sinister goals but usually, they manage one victory per episode to demonstrate their chemistry as a team and get one step closer to solving the mystery of Dhar's ambitions.
As with most average kids' shows, the humour revolves around puns, overreactions and flatulence that will not get much of a chuckle out of anyone who is not in elementary school. The character writing is rather thin, with our heroes filling templates and working together as a family — a common theme of the franchise — against yet another bad guy trying to take over the world and cause mayhem. Although, the villains' motivations for doing so are surprisingly dark for a kids' show. It is another bland 3D-animated kids' show to fill NETFLIX's growing library of entertainment options for families and younger audiences, without much to push the animation medium forward.
Fast & Furious: Spy Racers will be a joyride for fans of the franchise, with explosive action and fast cars, but it is challenging to recommend to both general viewers and animation fans to take this trope-heavy show for a test drive.
FAST AND FURIOUS: SPY RACERS is streaming exclusively on NETFLIX December 26th 2019
