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Cars: Pixar runs its seventh victory lap
Cars is Pixar’s worst movie - but it’s still one of the best films I’ve seen this year.
By “worst” I mean ‘movie that I loved the least.” For the first time, the peerless animation studio has made a film with a couple of dry patches that don’t move the story forward.
So all that talk you may have heard about Pixar stalling or not firing on all cylinders or whatever broken-down car metaphor other critics are using, is technically true, I suppose. Regardless, I came out of the movie just like I do all of Pixar’s films: feeling absolutely thrilled and light on my feet.
In that sense, the greatest winning streak in all of Hollywood remains intact. Pixar is seven-for-seven in making terrific entertainment.
The story centers around Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) an egotistical hotshot who wants to win the Piston Cup. He gets lost on his way to the race, literally tearing up the road to a dusty, forgotten little town off Route 66 called Radiator Springs. The town’s judge, a crusty old-timer named Doc Hudson (the always great Paul Newman), orders Lightning to stay in town and fix the road.
When people talk about what makes Pixar’s movies great, they usually talk about the animation and the humor first, and both shine in Cars. Technically, this is Pixar’s snazziest work yet, with astonishing attention to detail. Pixar guru John Lasseter’s love for cars radiates through every gleaming frame of this film he co-wrote and directed.
The humor is wondrously imaginative too, not just in the jokes, but in the design of the movie. Every single character is some kind of vehicle, with nary a human or animal in sight. Even the “flies” that buzz around the fluorescent lights are like Micro Machines. In a hilarious scene, Lightning and a lovable tow truck named Mater (Larry the Cable Guy) go “tractor-tipping,” and the tractors turn out to be the vehicle equivalent of cows.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, entails one of Pixar’s greatest miracles yet: they actually found a way to make Larry the Cable Guy endearing and funny.
But even more than the humor and the animation, what makes Pixar’s movies special is their heart. All of their films have at least one tear-welling “aww” scene. In Cars, it’s when Sally, a charming Porsche voiced by Bonnie Hunt, explains how Radiator Springs went to pot when the interstate was built, “just so people could save 10 minutes of driving.”
So it’s a little ironic, then, that the chief flaw of this movie is that it’s too long. At almost two hours, Cars feels slightly padded, with some moments designed more to sell the soundtrack than tell the story. Young, antsy kids might find their patience wearing thin, as will people who mourn the fact that the movie isn’t zippy and hip like The Incredibles.
It’s not supposed to be, though. I have long believed that one reason people find life such a chore is that they’re so busy flitting here there and everywhere and wanting things now, now, now that they make themselves miserable.
Cars not only relieves that misery, but reminds us how we can avoid it by pulling over to smell the roses every once in awhile. If that makes the movie a little too leisurely, it’s a price worth paying. Leave it to Pixar to find poetry even its flaws.
GRADE: A-
PS: Speaking of not being in a hurry, don’t leave when the credits start to roll, or you’ll miss the funniest gags, plus a lovely tribute to the late Joe Ranft, Pixar’s story artist who voiced Heimlich in A Bug’s Life and Wheezy in Toy Story 2. Ranft co-directed Cars before his untimely passing last year.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Reviews
Comments
By Socialwrkr
June 11, 2006 10:40 PM | Link to this
EXCELLENT MOVIE!! Took a 7 year old to see it and he couldn’t take his eyes off the screen, and I had the same issue! Loved the humor, several inside jokes referring to the other Pixar movies and just a great moral for kids. Loved it all and totally agree with the A rating!