After taking moviegoers underwater and down to ground level,
as well as into the realms of toys, monsters and superheroes, Pixar Animation
Studios hits the open road with 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 movie is colorful and for the most part enjoyable, but its
bloated running time and somewhat abstractly sentimental tenor might somewhat mitigate
youthful enjoyment, particularly of the repeat viewing variety.


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, 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 please retire for a bit the
obligatory montage with a Randy Newman song?). Amidst a competitive animated
summer slate this season — including the underrated Over the
Hedge — Cars pulled in $244 million, just under the $260 million domestic take of The Incredibles. Its G rating,
compared to that film’s PG, certainly helped, but it came up short of the blockbuster haul of Finding
Nemo (which pulled in $340 million), in part because the
“life lessons” learned in Cars play more to adult sensibilities.

Disney’s DVD release — which is available in separate 2.39:1 anamorphic widescreen and full screen single-disc, foil-embossed editions — comes in an impressively high bit-rate transfer that showcases fantastic character rendering, eye-popping color and deep, consistent blacks. Two audio tracks, in Dolby digital 2.0 surround and Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound EX, anchor the aural front. The supplemental features kick off with One-Man Band, the four-minute Pixar effort that preceded Cars in theaters, followed by a seven-minute animated short, Mater and the Ghostlight, that gives extra run to Larry the Cable Guy’s chatty character.

Lasseter then sits for a 16-minute featurette on the inspiration for the film, which delves into his childhood memories on Route 66. Rounding things out are four deleted scenes in rough form, totaling about 10 minutes. While slight when compared to the stuffed slate of many Disney animated titles — maybe a result of Disney and Pixar’s contentious contract renewal negotiations, and thus perhaps auguring a double-disc, anniversary double-dip further down the line — this release is no slouch, certainly qualitatively in terms of its visual presentation. Ranking somewhat to the low end of Pixar’s body of work
is no great shame, too, given the quality of that canon. But that’s the reality of
comparison. The world of Cars feels a bit less lively, spry and inherently
interesting than the worlds of the Toy Story movies, even though it’s
just as lovingly sketched and populated. B (Movie) B- (Disc)