Movie Review: Cars

By Anne Brodie Jun 9, 2006, 1:54 GMT

After taking moviegoers magically into the realm of toys, bugs, monsters, fish, and superheroes, the masterful storytellers and technical wizards at Pixar Animation Studios ("The Incredibles," "Finding Nemo," "Monsters, Inc."), and Academy Award®-winning director John Lasseter ("Toy Story," "Toy Story 2," "A Bug\'s Life"), hit the road with a fast-paced comedy adventure set inside the world of cars. Lightning McQueen (voice of Owen Wilson), a hotshot rookie race car driven ...more

I like cars as much as the next person. A beautiful vintage car is a thing of rare beauty and practicality. A new top-of-the-line creation is a cunning conglomeration of art, architecture and artificial intelligence.

Cars are our vessels on the river of life; they get us where we’re going like tiny, wheeled homes.

Cartoon Cars are noisy, bumptious heaps ‘o tin emitting noxious cartoon gasses into the air. You can smell cartoon fumes wafting off the screen. They stink. They’re obnoxiously loud.

Cartoon Car motors rev unrelentingly but appear to bring tremendous joy to the younger set. Squeals, applause and hoots of laughter filled the theatre at a Toronto word of mouth screening. They merged with the noxious gasses to create an unholy atmosphere certain to cause headaches for certain people.

And the ‘Cars’ will ride roughshod over the rest in the race to hit Box Office gold. Sure as shinola!

These cartoon ‘Cars’ have lots of individual personality; each is as well defined as allowed within the framework of a formulaic story. This means, not much.

The story is a reflection of a common nightmare – racing to overcome obstacles in a quest to get to an urgent, life-changing appointment. But as in dreams, the journey is the thing.

For race Car Lightning McQueen (voiced by Owen Wilson) the ongoing nightmare is the strong possibility that he’ll miss the annual Piston Cup race and his chance at gaining the respect of the cartoon race car community. 

As a rising race star, he develops a big head. He has way too much bravado, and some say he’s cocky. But he’s also beset by fears that he won’t measure up to his racing buddies or win the race.

En-route to the event in LA, Lightning gets lost and panics. A local sheriff Car catches him speeding over the dusty roads and hauls him into Radiator Springs’ Car court. During a melee on the Main Street, Lighting manages to destroy the town’s only road, a statue and other local landmarks and businesses.

The judge Car, Doc Hudson (voiced by Paul Newman) sentences Lightning to re-pave the road before he can leave for LA. Naturally, there is a cute ex-LA girl Car, and they begin a shy flirtation. Interesting locals fill out the action while Lightning grudgingly labors with black tar.

The locals offer him a new kind of non-competitive acceptance and thus begins his journey into enlightenment before his journey to win the Piston Cup race.

Interesting references aimed at adults offer blessed relief from the action. The character McQueen recalls the late, great iconic movie star and racing fan Steve McQueen.

Newman, who voices the judge, a onetime racing champ, owns a race car and says his favourite sound is a revving V-8 engine. Joanne Woodward has famously been trying to talk him out of racing because he’s nearly 81. So it’s a kind of wish fulfillment for him. Hence, the film is not without layers, as thin as they are.

The CGI scenery is remarkably lifelike; endless horizons, mesas, sunsets, desert flats and race pits and tracks appear three dimensional quality.

The problem is that it is a beautiful planet populated by metal and chrome. You’ll find yourself wishing that out of a Car will emerge a person, even a cartoon person, who will then reach around and shut off the engine for a minute or two.

Opens wide June 9, 2006  MPAA Rating G