I should have known as we walked into the theater to see Cars and my son started screaming, “No! No! No!” that I should have heeded his warning. True, he wasn’t screaming at Cars, but at a preview for some film called Ant Bully, but still, dense dad that I am, I should have listened to him. He’s young with those hip new ideas about things, you know.

You know his opinion of Cars, now here’s mine.

Lightning McQueen is a living, breathing car that lives in a strange alternate universe where cars, not people, are the dominant life form on the planet. They do everything that humans do, except that they’re cars. If I were an amateur film critic in this parallel universe he lives in I’d probably say “Cars is 16 cylinders of fun!”, or “Race on down to it!” or something lame like that, since I would also be a car who loves other cars and other car-related things.

But I’m human and not a car and don’t love all car related things. Most of all, I didn’t love Cars.

Starring:
Owen Wilson, Paul Newman, Michael Keaton, Bonnie Hunt, Richard Petty, Cheech Marin
Directed By:
John Lasseter & Joe Ranft
Release Date:
June 9, 2006
MPAA Rating:
G
Distributors:
Buena Vista Pictures Distribution
2 Stars

It’s not that I don’t love Pixar films. I usually freaking LOVE Pixar films. God bless Pixar, for they are the only reason that Disney makes money anymore, and honestly, shouldn’t Pixar be making ALL Disney films at this point? A Pixar film is a hallmark of cinematic quality; when you see that little bouncing lamp come out at the beginning of their films, you know you’re in for a great time and you’re also going to be amazed in some way. Not only are you going to get great looking animation, but a storyline that is engaging and funny too.

I love Toy Story, both 1 and 2, and The Incredibles is one of the great films of the past 10 years. My son loves Finding Nemo and every time he sees a clownfish it’s named “Nemo”, never “Fred” or “Biff”, just “Nemo”. I have less admiration for Monsters, Inc. and A Bug’s Life, mainly because I didn’t find them as interesting in the plot department, but they still looked great. If you watch the “making of” bits on each DVD for these films you can see the evolution of the Pixar animation process and they grow exponentionally with each new release.

Cars looks phenomenal. You’d think the opening bit, where Lightning is introduced, was the camera panning over a real car it looks so good. Pixar cares about how their films look, and the detail is great, but before where the plotlines were semi-complex, Cars could have been written by me in 2nd grade. Come on man, who couldn’t have come up with this?

An arrogant race car gets lost on his way to a race. While trying to find his way back to where he got lost in the first place, he comes upon a sleepy out-of-the-way town where time practically stands still. In the process of trying to leave the small town, he will come to understand that being arrogant isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be and he will make new lifelong friends where before he had none. He will also overcome adversity in the final “battle” and be successful without overdoing it the way he did before.

Take out the phrase “race car” from the first sentence of the paragraph and you’ve got a generic movie of the week or even some of your friends’ lives. It’s not a very complex story, but it also isn’t a very interesting story. What the Pixar people try to do with this weak story is make up for it with eye candy, but it’s not enough. The plot just doesn’t hold up its end of the bargain.