Pixar Animation’s seventh feature film is
also its weakest, set in a world where everyone’s a car, the humor is tepid,
and life is about as exciting as watching auto racing on TV. Okay, not that
dull.
This is the seventh in a string of wildly successful features
released by Pixar Animation Studios, now owned by Disney. All of the earlier
ones (the Toy Story movies, A Bug’s Life, Monsters, Inc., Finding
Nemo, and The Incredibles) have not only been big hits, but are
beloved by audiences and critics alike. Cars, directed by Toy Story’s
John Lasseter, has the top-notch computer animation that no doubt goes part way
to explaining Pixar’s success. But story-wise, it’s a dodgier affair.
It begins with an auto race, where we can see that the cars are driving
themselves, and that the audience too consists of cars. Everyone’s a car, but
the fastest is cocky Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson). In the film’s only
memorable line, he nicknames his chief rival “Thunder,” noting that “thunder
comes after lightning.” But pride goeth before a fall, and so Lightning must
learn an Important Lesson about needing others. This he learns from the forlorn
folks in a left-behind town on old Route 66 (the old song’s heard in two
versions), most notably the old racer appealing voiced by Paul Newman. Cars
isn’t awful, but it’s less funny and probably has less all-ages appeal than the
other Pixar flicks. It also continues the Pixar pattern of giving much more
prominence to the male characters (The Incredibles being an exception).
Bonnie Hunt plays a lawyer who doubles as a sort of love interest for
Lightning, but all the physical work is done by the he-cars. (The racers are
all male, too.) Hunt’s paean to the pre-Interstate highway system is more
touching than anything else. The theatrical release of Cars was preceded
by the charming, Academy Award-nominated short One Man Band.
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