Car movies were a phase I quickly grew out of during my teens. Like a lot of my classmates in high school, The Fast and the Furious sufficiently pumped my blood, but the ensuing sequels came up short, and a re-watch of the original left me wondering why I ever got into this series in the first place. I still have respect for a few automotive adventures (namely the original versions of Gone in 60 Seconds and Vanishing Point), but my tolerance for gearheads gloating about how souping up their Chevys makes them more "free" has long since been surpassed. The new video game adaptation Need for Speed isn't quite as obnoxious with its attitude, but it definitely veers in that direction, aiming for "rebellious" but sputtering out closer to "smug." Above all, it's just an intensely uninteresting flick, wasting a fine line-up of practically-executed car stunts on a story so monotonous, you can't be bothered to care even when things do go kablooey.

Cars aren't everything for Tobey Marshall (Aaron Paul) -- they're the only thing. Tinkering with rides is his greatest passion, one he shared with his dearly departed father, whose custom body shop has unfortunately fallen on hard times. With the garage on the brink of going under, Tobey has no choice but to accept a gig from his arrogant rival, Dino Brewster (Dominic Cooper). But soon after, Dino goads Tobey into a race that ends in tragedy, with the former leaving the latter in the dust to take the blame. His sense of injustice thoroughly agitated, our boy emerges from a stint in the slammer as a man on a mission, determined to right this awful wrong and take the real guilty party to task. Just how Tobey plans to accomplish this sems unclear, but what's certain is that it's all going down at the De Leon, an annual and highly-illegal street race run by a recluse called Monarch (Michael Keaton). With a British beauty (Imogen Poots) assigned to keep her eye on him, Tobey hits the pavement in a modified Ford Mustang, blazing a trail of vengeance to the De Leon in a quest to expose Dino once and for all.

Need for Speed will probably go down as the first video game-based movie to have too much plot. The series itself consists of games largely unrelated in story -- should they be so inclined as to use one at all -- so director Scott Waugh and his writers have ample breathing room to work with. In contrast to the Fast/Furious movies, which have increasingly emphasized globe-trotting escapades and ludicrous stunt sequences over time, Need for Speed wants to keep things glitzy but grounded, focusing on just one dude with revenge on the brain. Yet the job of setting up and executing this simple premise is something that Waugh and crew felt compelled to complicate to the point of confusion. Where a more economic picture could have done it in fifteen minutes, it's nearly an hour before Need for Speed gets to the meat of its story, prolonging that first act with miles of uninteresting subplots and boring supporting characters that only wear on our patience. Once the action finally does kick into gear, the flick remains shockingly vague on what Tobey's plan of attack is. He does absolutely no detective work (getting his biggest break from someone whose sole function is to stumble upon evidence and disappear shortly thereafter), and he hasn't any other intentions than just racing Dino and apparently hoping the truth comes out at the finish line.

But how does Need for Speed rank in terms of action, which many will declare more vital than a comprehensive plot instead of answering criticisms about its overall lack of creativity? Well, to the film's credit, I'm grateful for the fact that not only were the majority of the driving sequences performed live and with actual cars, Waugh wanted you to know it. Though some shaky-cam is employed, the cinematography captures the vehicles in motion with great clarity, and if any CG enhancements were employed, they were hidden well. Still, none of the film's efforts to provide standout stunts for fans to go nuts over (scenes that include refueling a car as it blazes down the highway and a rescue via Apache helicopter) seem to be teeming with a whole lot of energy to burn. The actors feel similarly resigned to their cliched fates, taking turns either glowering at the camera with laughably unconvincing broodiness or cracking one of many lame jokes. Fresh off his "Breaking Bad" success, Paul makes the leap to leading man status with mixed results; he spends most of his time seething and playing all the tortured hero notes he can think of, although this is more the fault of a script that gives him nothing else to do. Cooper is a slimy but incredibly flat villain, Poots an equally one-dimensional love interest, and as much fun as Keaton tries to have, it's all for naught, as we're too preoccupied with wondering what his character's deal is to climb aboard.

Need for Speed appears so sanitized and starved for any genuine conviction with which to fuel itself, it can't even pull off acting too cool for school. For all its jabs at us normal folks being condemned to the slow lane by those who've tapped into their inner road warriors, it amounts to a whole lot of shallow posturing more than anything else, making much noise to disguise how small its engine really is. The Fast/Furious franchise hasn't won me over yet, but I'll take its self-aware silliness instead of Need for Speed's faux machismo any day.

 BLU-RAY SPECIAL FEATURES:

-Audio commentary by director Scott Waugh and actor Aaron Paul

-Behind-the-scenes featurettes

-Outtakes and deleted scenes

-A trailer for the Need for Speed: Rivals game

(Released by Walt Disney Studios and rated "PG-13" by MPAA.)