Although it was adapted from Tatsuo Yoshida’s trailblazing anime comic, the original Japanese version of the 1960s “Speed Racer” cartoon (titled “Mach GoGoGo” in both the paper and broadcast Nipponese versions) was itself inspired by the kitschy car culture in racetrack-themed Elvis Presley movies such as “Viva Las Vegas,” as well as the stylish, secret-agent derring-do of the original James Bond films. When “Mach GoGoGo” was acquired by Trans-Lux Television for airing in America in 1967, producer, writer, and voice actor Peter Fernandez was hired to smooth out any conceptually rough terrain by rewriting shows that, though ceaselessly energetic and deliriously kinetic (in spite of the necessary shortcuts of low-budget “limited” animation), were still more Japanese in theme and tone than American kids were likely to appreciate.

Mr. Fernandez and his small cast of voice-over artists — all seasoned dubbing veterans of American “Godzilla” movies and spaghetti Westerns — outdid themselves. By renaming characters, rewriting dialogue to fit on-screen lip movements (often in surreal bursts of exposition-heavy declamation), and emphasizing each episode’s multiple cliffhangers, Mr. Fernandez and his team created in “Speed Racer” a gloriously off-kilter, Sino-American pop-culture exchange that was akin to American garage bands of the ’60s covering British-Invasion versions of homegrown blues and soul standards.

A big-screen “Speed Racer” has been in some form of development since 1986, when producer David Lane Seltzer optioned the series. Talent involved with the film at various times has included actors Johnny Depp and Vince Vaughn, directors Julien Temple, Alfonso Cuaron, and Hype Williams, and screenwriters Marc Levin and J.J. Abrams. Unfortunately, the highly anticipated and long-gestating big-screen adaptation of the American “Speed Racer” series that arrives on screens today contains barely a trace of the wit and zip of the original’s fast, loose, and hysterical stories and sensibilities.

The Wachowskis, creators of “V for Vendetta” and the “Matrix” series, have recast “Speed Racer” in a hermetically sealed, digitally generated universe entirely free of any edge. The film’s story, in which Speed (played by Emile Hirsch and by Nicholas Elia in multiple and interminable flashbacks) and his extended family run afoul of an unscrupulous corporate racing sponsor (Roger Allum, making the strongest effort to match the unique vocal delivery of the old series), is simultaneously convoluted and dully oversimplified. “What just happened?” Speed’s pit-crew boss, Sparky (Kick Gurry, a dead ringer for Wachowski regular Hugo Weaving), asks after one characteristically confusing plot point spills out with such clumsiness that it’s more akin to a stab than a twist. The “what” and “why” of the Wachowskis’ “Speed Racer” remains at the starting line for a full 135 minutes.

This wouldn’t be such a hindrance if the film’s wall-to-wall action sequences and visual flights of fancy had any heft. But the Wachowskis’ cotton-candy bright, utterly joyless retro fever dream world, photographed almost entirely on a green screen at Germany’s fabled Studio Babelsberg (former home of UFA Studios and birthplace of Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” and F.W. Murnau’s “The Last Laugh”), doesn’t have any traction. The cars in the new “Speed Racer” swerve, skid, leap, and roll free of the confines of physics and of any sense of risk, stakes, tension, or peril. Despite a constant barrage of character profiles, cars, ninjas, and chimpanzees drifting across the screen in cluttered, digitally layered tableaus, the net effect is inertia.

The Wachowskis make no effort to disguise the fact that “Speed Racer” is intended to be “family entertainment,” aimed at the same 10-and-under demographic represented by Speed’s youngest brother Spritle (Paulie Litt). But as the film fizzes, bubbles, and burbles along to a non-climax, the filmmakers’ visually ambitious but story-hostile vision becomes a garish abstraction that could only satisfy a toddler. By the end credits, “Speed Racer” feels less like a film than a feature-length episode of “Teletubbies” created for future catatonics.

In the title role, Mr. Hirsch, like the rest of a game but befuddled cast — including Susan Sarandon and John Goodman as Mom and Pops Racer, and Christina Ricci as Speed’s girlfriend, Trixie — does his best to keep the film on track at a character level. But the script, which aspires to preposterous winking modernism but settles for a slack-jawed numbing factitiousness, sucks the potential out of almost every scene. It doesn’t help that with her anime-sized eyes, broad face, and jet-black bob, Ms. Ricci bears a closer physical resemblance to the androgynous original cartoon Speed Racer than Mr. Hirsch does.

With the digital checkered flag down and “Speed Racer” now out and doing battle in the summer blockbuster box-office speedway, it would seem, in retrospect, that the one contemporary filmmaker qualified to harness the multicultural, multi-referential, alternately light and dark mutant pop energy of the original “Speed Racer” would have been Canada’s Guy Maddin. So much the pity that neither Mr. Maddin nor producer Joel Silver and Warner Bros. would likely ever take a chance on one another.