Up to this point, I have praised Pixar's quality again and again, offering a lot of great reviews for a lot of great movies. But in the summer of 2011, Pixar would release 'Cars 2'; a film that came out to some rather scathing reviews that suggested this animation company God has suddenly taken a turn for the worse. To this day, it's probably considered the biggest overall disappointment of the Pixar library, having lost that special touch of "deep" they have offered up until now. I completely overlooked it until only a few years ago, first reviewing it here as a 'Catching Up' review. Our hero from the previous film, Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson), heads to a race to compete against a new up-and-coming, trash-talking racer named Francesco Bernoulli (John Turturro). He allows his best friend, Tow Mater (Larry the Cable Guy), to come along with him, with the slight fear that he might mess things up. Meanwhile, however, Mater is mistaken as an American agent by an international spy named Finn McMissile (Michael Caine). He's then brought on a mission to help stop a group of "lemon" cars, who are plotting against Allinol; the fuel company keeping modern racers in business. The film is more about Mater than McQueen, and all in all, it ends up being pretty forgettable. I never really and truly thought this film was terrible, but it's easily on the weaker end of Pixar. This was a bit more of a merchandise-pusher than a good story with good characters, and most certainly aimed at a younger audience. On a personal level, I've always thought the 'Cars' series to be a little on the bland side, and more for others than myself. I was never really a gearhead or anything like that, and the most I've ever gotten from any of these was the first one's teachings on, shall we say, "slowing down and enjoying the view". This doesn't have a whole lot to teach other than a few basic friendship concepts that other Pixar films have frankly done better. This film pulls the whole thing where the sequel is based on the first film's comedic relief, thus knocking the quality down a notch or two. Comedy relief works in a movie because it's off to the side. It provides a laugh while other, more serious things are going on. Once that comedy becomes the plot, there's no comedy relief for that comedy relief, and it just ends up becoming lame. In this case, the comedy relief in question is Larry the Cable Guy, who feels like an incredibly dated act nowadays. But that's also speaking for myself. I think that while I criticize, the film is pretty much harmless for a young audience, and I wouldn't necessarily deter them from checking it out. It's not without its share of fun in that sense, but again, it's incredibly weak in the way of story, and feels very "straight-to-video", but it wasn't. It may not actually mean much to many, but this is the first Pixar film to earn no Oscar nominations at all. With that, it almost felt official that this was just a kids movie, lacking that typical Pixar magic we've really grown to love over the years. For my money, the company had reached its peak with 'Toy Story 3' and, in a way, this almost feels like them taking a breather from their typical touch. It's sort of as if they said "let's just throw our brains out the window for once." There's nothing about the movie I find insultingly stupid or anything, but I might suggest that this is what Pixar comes up with when they don't really try, and half-ass a project. Let's be fair enough and say we all do this, and no production company actually has a perfect track record. So, as far as this big, glamorous library of animated instant classics goes, I would probably go with this one being the overall weakest entry into the entire library. For yours truly, it's Pixar's answer to the MCU's 'Thor: The Dark World' - it's lame, it's forgettable, and basically every other title in the series is superior, even if only by a little tiny bit. This was the beginning of a strange dip in quality for Pixar, with more to follow. This was where one might suggest that Pixar officially lost its magic, and we started turning our attention to competing animation companies. In fact, if you can believe it, the Academy's Best Animated Feature category had no hint of Disney that year. Thankfully, we've since seen Pixar pic up the slack, but that was a heck of a time for us big-time Pixar fiends (me, truly joining the bandwagon with 'Up'). 2/5
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So far, Pixar has given personality to toys, bugs, monsters and fish who, as far as we can tell, live in a sort of "real-world" setting. For this reason, when the idea of these anthropomorphic cars and trucks came along for Pixar's next movie, I turned my nose up at it. I didn't have a problem with it, per se, but it was very clear-cut this time that it was gonna be for kids (in other words, I still hadn't learned my lesson when it came to Pixar's storytelling quality). What I thought this film was going to be was what 'Cars 2' became, but more on that with that review. 'Cars' tells a story that takes place in an alternate world where vehicles take on human qualities while maintaining most aspects of cars we know about. Here, we meet racing rookie, Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) who goes up against retiring legend, Strip "The King" Weathers (Richard Petty) and pro racer, Chick Hicks (Michael Keaton) in the final race of the Piston Cup. The race ends un a three-way tie, however, and a tie-breaking race is scheduled for one week later at the Los Angeles International Speedway. McQueen maintains a cocky attitude about his skills, and doesn't seem to want or need anyone's help to become a new racing legend. He becomes desperate to get to LA quickly to shmooze with Dinoco; the oil company representing Hicks, in the hopes to switch to them over his less glamorous Rust-Eze sponsors. McQueen insists that his transport truck, Mac (John Ratzenberger again) drive straight to LA through the night, which results in Mac dozing off and a near-accident that sends McQueen falling out of the trailer, finding himself lost, and soon in trouble with the small town of Radiator Springs after accidentally ruining their main road. McQueen is tasked with fixing the road before they allow him to leave, making him stress about the big race. However, McQueen also meets a group of locals, primarily featuring a Porsche named Sally (Bonnie Hunt), a tow truck named Mater (Larry the Cable Guy) and an experienced Hudson Hornet known as Doc (Paul Newman), who might collectively be able to teach him that winning and fame aren't all there is to life. My opinion on the 'Cars' series has been more or less the same throughout the trilogy (so far) in that these movies are nothing special, and Pixar doesn't exactly strike the same chord here as with other films. For my money, however, I would lean towards the first film probably being the best of the three (at least easily over 'Cars 2'). When the location of Radiator Springs is seen as an aged and forgotten place that once looked awesome in its heyday, it does provoke a certain nostalgia. I think it's safe to say that many of us live fairly close to an area that would have been a lot of fun in a certain time, but now it's old and forgotten just because people have moved on. That aspect of the film is actually pretty moving, and does tug at the heartstrings a little. So it was good to see that the film certainly still had that Pixar heart behind it. The film's overall emotional impact hits a touch harder when we see that it is dedicated to the late Joe Ranft, who ironically died tragically in a car crash during the filming of 'Cars'. He has several credits to his name in the Pixar collection up to this point - where he would get his credit for co-directing. One has to appreciate that 'Cars' brings the name to the viewer's attention, as if to say "this guy had a hand in everything we've done" (quite literally). He may be best known as a voice actor, but the man worked in the art department and penning scripts as well. Because of this memorial, I end up liking the film more; not just because an important person passed away, but because it makes you take a second look at the film's message of enjoying more of life's simple pleasures and not constantly focusing on one thing, and heading in one direction, as you could be missing something great. I enjoy 'Cars', but it's unfortunate that it's responsible for launching a whole somewhat failed universe of both Cars and Planes. This series has three movies, and Disney (without Pixar) saw some money to be made by spinning off of the universe with 'Planes' (1 and 2). This was one of those cases where it didn't quite work out in their favour due to rough reviews and poor box office returns, and I'm glad they didn't draw it all out by coming up with something like 'Boats' or 'Trains' next. But if I were to recommend any of the titles from this world, it would easily be this one (followed somewhat closely by 'Cars 3', but again, more on that later). It's a film that teaches us about the highway of life and the idea that every once in a while, you've just got to pull over and enjoy the view. 4/5 |
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