Review: Cars


In a world devoid of humans, arrogant racing car Lightning McQueen (voiced by Owen Wilson) has an automobile accident on his way to a big tournament that sees him stranded in a dead-end town called Radiator Springs. He’s arrested for a traffic offence and judge Doc Hudson (voiced by Paul Newman, a long-time racing fan and driver in real-life) sentences him to repair a stretch of road. Doc also happens to be a former racing champion himself. Bonnie Hunt voices Sally, a Porsche and local motel owner who slowly starts to find some charm in McQueen. Paul Dooley voices a jeep named Sarge, George Carlin is a hippie VW, and John Ratzenberger has his moments voicing a neglectful big rig in charge of transporting McQueen.


AKA: “Doc Hollywood” meets “Wacky Racers”. This 2006 John Lasseter film for Pixar should’ve been a cracker, even for non-revheads like me. The animation is superlative, and hey, any film with the voices of Paul Newman, Michael Keaton, and Paul Dooley is not to be sneezed at, especially when Pixar’s proven track record is added (no pun intended). Unfortunately, the story, which is really just a re-tooling of the lukewarm Michael J. Fox film “Doc Hollywood”, is unoriginal, moralistic and rather dull. It doesn’t help that Wilson’s Lightning McQueen is incredibly arrogant and self-obsessed, not likeable at all. And he never really grows by the end, either. The other characters are generally nondescript and mostly par for the course for these sorts of films (Oh, wow, a sassy African-American car and a Latino one…voiced by Cheech, of course! Nice stereotyping, Pixar!), and personally, I don’t dig cars. They go vroom and drive you places. So. Freaking. What. The car racing scenes were also incessantly noisy, too, a problem I had with “A Bug’s Life”, there was just too much chatter for my ears. And there were too many of them.


The idea of a world entirely made up of motor vehicles isn’t as clever as it sounds. With no humans in sight, or at least more agreeable anamorphic characters, there’s no one to latch onto.  Larry the Cable Guy steals it as the loveable hick tow truck driver Mater (tow-mater, get it?), and even he’s playing a stereotype based on a cliché.


It’s got some fine moments here and there, and on a technical level it is an accomplishment, but story and character-wise, Pixar are sitting on their arses with this lazy, undernourished effort. I mean, stealing from a Michael J. Fox movie? (And geez, at least steal from a good one like “Teen Wolf”. Hey, that was a cool movie when I was 6!) For a film about motor vehicles, it sure don’t go very far…or very fast for that matter. It stalls midway (Last gag…I promise!), for an awfully long pit stop (oops, sorry!). Scripted by Dan Fogelman, Philip Loren, and Kiel Murray, I know a lot of people loved this, but it’s watchable at best. Even that may be too kind.


Rating: C+

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