Wow! What a great look at NASCAR racing, and in IMAX style. I’m near completely ignorant about the sport, but NASCAR: The IMAX Experience was an amazing look at how intense and popular it has become. NASCAR is an acronym for “National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing.”

This film or another may have been released in IMAX theaters in 3D, but this is a normal IMAX film, not some IMAX Nascar 3D. The film tells the story of racing with an emphasis on stock car racing that led up to NASCAR as we know it today. It is paced really well and doesn’t have a slow and gradual build up with some sort of a big race right at the end of the film. Rather, you’re on the track in typical IMAX wide angle style, ripping around turns and speeding by other cars fairly quickly into the film. Interspersed are details about the cars themselves, the teams that work on the cars and engines, the owners. It seems like a rather lucrative and expensive sport. Some of the big owners, the ones that have more than 1 team, have huge garages, or warehouses I should say, full of cars. You get an exciting look at these and how they pack up the parts and cars they need to hit the road and get to a race.

Not too much seemed to be focused on the drivers of the cars, rather the team aspect of the sport itself. And a sport it is, at least, kind of. Those pit crew guys, they lift weights and stuff to stay in shape since they have to change the tires and jack the car up in like, oh, 10 seconds or something crazy like that.

Anyway, an enjoyable watch, didn’t seem to have a boring moment. You get a good feel for what NASCAR is all about. I have to admit that I’ll not change the channel next time I am channel surfing and I come across a NASCAR event. It really seems like a cool spectator and fan sport and I can’t wait until I have the chance to go to a race sometime. Some of those racetracks are huge. And it’ll be great to actually be there in person, it’ll be more like this NASCAR: The IMAX Experience in an IMAX theater. I only saw it on DVD, but it was still worth it.

Good luck with this one!

9 out of 10.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 27th, 2005 at 7:30 pm and is filed under IMAX DVD reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.