'Fast and Furious: Spy Racers' is a playful and self-aware version of Vin Diesel-starring movie franchise
Spoilers ahead for Netflix's show 'Fast and Furious: Spy Racers'...
'Fast and Furious: Spy Racers', the animated eight-episode show on Netflix, sets itself apart from the movie franchise by taking a lighter and self-aware tone. The show has great car chases, with a dash of humor here and there - something that fans of the franchise might take some time to get used to. The show introduces us to one Mr. Tony Toretto (Tyler Posey), who aspires to be just like his cousin Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) and dreams of one day being even better than him in the world of car races.
Things take off when Tony and his friends -- Echo (Charlet Chung), Cisco (Jorge Diaz) and Frostee (Luke Youngblood) -- get hired by a secret organization after Dom introduces them to Ms. Knowhere (Renée Elise Goldsberry) and her assistant Gary.
What starts as a fun mission, something that Tony hopes would help him become a good racer, becomes a messy affair. The fact that they would get the most interesting of spyware if they worked with Ms. Knowhere is one of the many perks that push Tony and his friends to go undercover as racers to join Shashi's (Manish Dayal) crew as SH1FT3R.
Tony would have to win a SH1FT3R recruiter's race to enter the crew and this race is an invite-only event, which Tony and his friends gatecrash. That's when they meet Shashi's best friend and partner-in-crime Layla Gray (Camille Ramsey). Tony is trying to find the truth about why Shashi uses his races as a cover to steal cars from billionaires. While doing so, and while doing so, he and his friends get mixed up in Shashi's plan for revenge, particularly against five billionaires who exploited his parents' hope to live the American Dream to gain access to an impressive piece of technology. This particular technology has been used by these five men to earn more money by hook or crook.
On the surface, 'Fast and Furious: Spy Racers' is a simple show about car racers going undercover. However, the eight-episode show also includes a conversation about how immigrants are manipulated and taken advantage of. Shashi's parents were intelligent people who created a technology called the Skeleton Key, and which could change the world. In return for their invention, they were gifted with death and the Skeleton Key was placed under guard. The place where it is held can only be unlocked when five keys are placed in the right slots.
The main attraction of the show are the car stunts, which in a live action movie would have looked comical on the big screen, but work in this animated version. For instance, one of the scenes sees Tony drive a car upwards on the walls of a building in an attempt to reach the top floor because of time constraints. We also have drivers flying off in parachutes when their cars go over the cliff during races.
From a circular saw attached to the car to cut off competition to using planes that are remotely driven by a thirteen-year-old, there are moments in the show that would have been incredulous and silly in a live-action movie.
Instead, 'Fast and Furious: Spy Racers' is a self-aware show that is mindful of the many stereotypical situations that we usually see in movies that center on spies, car races and villains who aim for global domination. From heroes making grand plans that never work as they should to the tech guy in the crew who saves the day, the show subverts most of the tropes that fuel the 'Fast and Furious' franchise.
This is especially clear when Frostee, a 13-year-old, is forced to take remote control of an army fighter jet, which he then has to control to ensure that his friends are not hurt. Under pressure, Frostee lashes out that he is just a 13-year-old kid who has been forced to fly a drone plane at a moment's notice. There are many such scenes in the same vein.