At one dramatic moment in "Speed Racer," a chimpanzee throws his own feces in someone's face. It's an apt metaphor for the whole film.

Perhaps the stupidest movie ever made for a budget of $100 million, "Speed Racer" accomplishes the impossible: It makes the 1960s animated television show on which it is based seem thoughtful and well-crafted in comparison.

The TV version was idiotic, but at least it was short, just a half-hour, including commercials. The movie is every bit as moronic, but it astonishingly drags on for more than two hours, pounding away at us with its inanity.

And it isn't just imbecilic (its main character, after all, is named Speed Racer). It is also utterly, entirely soulless. Andy and Larry Wachowski, who wrote and directed it, made the whole thing without so much as a single moment of humanity or genuine feeling.

As if to emphasize this lack of humanness, they rendered almost the entire film on computers (it is live-action in name only). Everything from the endless race sequences to the candy-colored clothes and backgrounds is created on or enhanced by computers.

The point is to re-create the look of the cartoon on which it is based, which is a questionable idea, anyway. But like every other aspect of the film, this computer-generated imagery is inept.

Emile Hirsch stars as Speed Racer, a talented young race driver. He turns down an offer to drive for an evil corporate sponsor, who then vows to exact revenge on Speed. Speed then runs a couple of races against the sponsor's driver thugs.

That's the entire plot -- for a two-hour movie -- and although it is simplistic, the few details we are given are incomprehensible. Some part of the story involves the manipulation of stock prices, which is hardly a fascinating topic for children, the presumed audience.

The Wachowski Brothers, who also made the "Matrix" movies, pander to what they assume is a child's lack of attention by launching an unceasing barrage of pop-colored images at the audience.

Fortunately, the amount of damage they can do in creating a generation of children with attention-deficit disorder is limited by the number of people who will actually be able to stand to watch it.

At its worst -- and that's saying something -- "Speed Racer" resorts to prying out laughs through the cartoonish antics of Speed's younger brother, Spritle, and his comic chimp cohort, Chim Chim. If possible, these jokes are even dumber (and less funny) than anything in the original cartoon.

Somehow, the Wachowskis managed to attract the talents of Susan Sarandon, John Goodman, Christina Ricci and Matthew Fox to this film. It is unlikely their careers will ever fully recover.