Cars,
long a passion project of company CEO John Lasseter, who here jumps back behind
the “camera” and directs for the first time since 1999’s Toy Story 2. The tale of a hotshot rookie race car who discovers
the value of friendship and life in the slow lane when he’s stranded in a small
desert town en route to an important race, the colorful movie should be an
off-the-line commercial smash, but its bloated running time and somewhat
abstractly sentimental tenor might mitigate youthful enjoyment, particularly of
the repeat viewing variety.
Owen Wilson voices Lightning McQueen, a self-centered,
high-performance sports car gunning for the coveted Piston Cup. (A quick word
about Cars’ characters: while all are
anthropomorphized and imbued with their own personality traits, the film is
additionally, somewhat unnervingly, devoid of all humans. Autos drive
themselves, and the racing pit crews are manned by other vehicles, etc.) With
the esteemed King (voiced by Richard Petty) retiring, glory-hound Lightning
also sees this as his opportunity to wrest important sponsorship dollars away
from perennial runner-up Chick Hicks (voiced by Michael Keaton). After a
photo-finish tie in the race that opens the movie, a special run-off across the
country in
announced.
An accident along the way shakes Lightning free from his
trailer, and — since race cars don’t have headlights — he finds himself lost.
His situation becomes a more fixed detour when, after a high-speed chase that
tears up the sleepy, abandoned town of Radiator Springs, Lightning is sentenced
by Doc Hudson (voiced by Paul Newman), himself secretly an old race car, to fix
up and re-pave the streets he has damaged. Resentful at first, and panicked to
get to California as quickly as possible, Lightning slowly comes to appreciate
the town’s denizens, including local attorney Sally Carrera (voiced by Bonnie
Hunt), a curvaceous Porsche; sociable tow truck Mater (voiced by Larry the
Cable Guy); and emotional tire shop owner Luigi (voiced by Tony Shalhoub), a
1959 Italian Fiat.
As is typical of Pixar’s efforts, the animation on display
in Cars is jaw-droppingly impressive,
approaching photorealism at times. Even more astutely, those who have traversed
I-40 or the old Route 66 on cross-country drives will likely recognize specific
landmarks and geographical formations. This attention to intricate detail
elevates the material and helps rescue a few passages that might otherwise be
characterized as dramatically inert. The characters, too, grow on you. While it
takes some getting used to the imposition of human eyes and lids on windshields
— and the absence of humans seems a bit too Christine,
and never fully explained — the various collisions of personality that the
movie draws out make for some fun scenes.
Where Cars bogs
down some is in its too-brawny opening (all dialed-up sound mix) and pointedly
nostalgic but somewhat malingering efforts to play up the then-versus-now
changes in lifestyle (can we retire for a bit the obligatory montage with a
Randy Newman song?). Amidst a competitive animated slate this season —
including the underrated Over the
Hedge, as well as the forthcoming Monster House and The Ant
Bully — Cars could find its
grosses stalled around or significantly under the $260 million domestic take of
The Incredibles. Its G rating,
compared to that film’s PG, will help, but the sort of blockbuster haul of Finding Nemo (which pulled in $340 million)
looks unlikely, in part because the lessons learned in Cars play more to adult sensibilities.
Ranking somewhat to the low end of Pixar’s body of work is
no great shame, given the quality of that canon. But that’s the reality of
comparison. The world of Cars feels
less lively, spry and inherently interesting than the worlds of the Toy Story movies, even though it’s just
as lovingly sketched and populated. (Disney/Pixar, G, 116
mins.)