"Ahhh... it's got that new movie smell."

Cars takes place in a world where all forms of automobiles exist as live creatures. Lightning McQueen is a rookie race car with a hot paint job and an ego to match. He gets lost on the way to a race in California and finds himself stranded in a small town, Radiator Springs, and makes like Michael J. Fox in Doc Hollywood doing community service.

The movie opens with a race and ends with one. In between McQueen learns all kinds of lessons about friendship and winning. The lesson is pretty much hammered into the audience. Early on McQueen's agent asks him for the names of his friends so he can send them some complimentary tickets to the race. McQueen doesn't have friends and thus does not give any names. He of course ends up endearing himself to the local towns folks.

The jokes come from the supporting cast. Carlin is a hippy van who has come up with an organic fuel. Larry is a tow truck named Mater who explains, "It's like ta-mater, but without the ta." He and McQueen go tractor tipping in the funniest scene in the movie. My favorite supporting character is Guido the tire salesman, who ends up liking McQueen even though he is not a Ferrari.

Cars suffers only in the middle of the movie when it slows down to hammer McQueen's lesson about friendship and winning. It also has a needless sequence about how Route 66 use to be a popular way to travel until the highway was built. Learning something in a movie is okay as long as it does not hamper the entertainment of the film. A little trimming in the middle of this film would have helped. WHen you find yourself getting bored take a look at the background and try to see how many car referrences you can find in the background. The mountains are all car shaped and the clouds have car tracks on them.

Did you enjoy Eric's review? +0 -0

 

Eric is right to give Cars a rather hesitant endorsement. It does entertain, but it is definitely a lesser Pixar endeavor when you compare it to Toy Story or Monsters, Inc.. There are still many entertaining moments and some great characters, but they never quite gel together and the middle is far too maudlin and a bit dull.

Wilson, as McQueen, is mainly just there as straight man to the supporting cast, whom get all the movie's best moments and biggest laughs. Mater (Larry the Cable Guy) was my personal favorite, but like Eric, found the Italian tire shop owners to be also quite funny.

My favorite moment in the movie didn't come until the closing credits when they show a drive-in theater showing car-themed versions of Pixar's earlier films, like A Toy Car Story and Monster Trucks, Inc., featuring the voices of Tom Hanks, Tim Allen and Billy Crystal.

Like all Pixar cartoons, the animation is amazing. During the scene where McQueen and Sally are driving through the mountains, the attention to detail in the scenery is so finely crafted that you can almost believe that it isn't a cartoon at all. It makes you think, just how many years will it be before you are unable to tell if a movie is computer generated or not?

Perhaps the best judge of a cartoon is how children receive it. I can't vouch for anywhere else, but when I saw it there were a number of kids in the audience and by about half-way through it, they were restless and a few of them even started chasing each other up and down the aisles.

An entertaining cartoon, but one that falls short of being a classic.

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