Running Time: 1 hour, 53 minutes
Rating: G
Director: John Lasseter
Quick Impressions:
The original Cars is, by far, my least favorite Pixar film, but I was kind of excited about the sequel because I heard it focused more on Mater (my favorite character) and had a Hitchcockian plot. Overall, the intriguing concept of making a sequel in a different genre than the original didn’t work, but I still enjoyed watching Cars 2. I thought the set-up felt awkward, contrived, and prolonged, but in the end the movie delivered with a likeable protagonist, beautiful animation, crisp sound, and engaging action.
Setting plot, pacing, and character development aside, the movie looked fantastic and sounded just as amazing. I loved the soundtrack. Honestly, I think I might have liked the movie better if it had just been scenes of bustling foreign cities set to catchy music.
The Negatives:
I keep asking myself why the movie wasn’t as effective as it wanted to be. I actually think the biggest problem may be that it did not feel like a sequel to Cars because filmmakers completely changed the genre of the story. In theory, a sequel in a different genre sounds high concept and exciting, but in practice, it didn’t work out so well. The characters in Cars inhabited a highly developed fictional world that obeyed certain rules. In Cars 2, Radiator Springs and its charming atmosphere and inhabitants got completely sidelined. In a story about international espionage, the town with a heart of gold became irrelevant. The first movie spent so much time trying to show us that even though Route 66 was no longer traveled, Radiator Springs and its inhabitants still mattered, but Cars 2 seems to admit, “Well, yeah, but we all know they really don’t. Now let’s race around the world and spray super villains with bullets.”
Cars 2 just didn’t feel like a Cars movie. (Imagine Godfather 2: A Romantic Comedy, Aliens (the Musical!), Winnie the Pooh 2: Eeyore’s Barbiturate Overdose.) Maybe the movie should have been given a different title and offered as a spin-off rather than a sequel since Mater is clearly the protagonist this time around instead of Lightning McQueen.
Honestly, the first Cars always bored me, but after watching it at home with a very young child, I began to see it in a new light. Not only did it have bright, shiny, noisy, exciting cars as protagonists, but it also had a very simple story, completely free of any real evil or genuine menace. It wasn’t scary or violent and contained nothing that would terrify or alienate young children or their grandparents. By comparison, Cars 2 is noisy, complicated, and violent.
It reminded me a bit of POC: On Stranger Tides in that the beginning of the movie seemed like a contrived, floundering attempt to find an excuse to get the story started. Jokes fell flat. Timing seemed off. The scene in which Mater towed a lemon back into town felt forced, as if it had been clumsily inserted to make a very clunky point.
The opening action sequence starring Finn McMissile involved some complicated elements and was quite difficult to explain to my two-year-old. (Granted, what a two-year-old thinks is not an acid test for the quality of a movie, but by comparison, the original Cars is almost ridiculously simplistic and easy to explain. “That’s Lightning McQueen. He’s a race car. Will he win the race? Oh, it’s a tie! He’s not being very nice.” You definitely cannot explain the opening of Cars 2 to a preschooler with the same kind of ease.)
Initially, the plot seemed complicated, inadequate, sloppy, and disjointed. The story unfolded awkwardly and never really gelled until Mater went undercover as Ivan. Then suddenly, the plot surprised me by not only making sense but even being rather clever (not very original, of course, but originality has never been the strong point of the Cars franchise). (I’m pretty sure that I’ve seen almost the exact same scheme before in both Speed Racer and Inspector Gadget cartoons.) Still, though well thought out, the plot was not presented in a way that young children would understand. Children will be able to follow the action occurring in the movie but may not understand the reasoning behind it. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but the first Cars movie was very, very easy to follow.
Cars 2 seems like a doomed hybrid creation—a plot that will mean more to adults inserted into a jumbled, noisy cartoon that no adult without children would possibly endure long enough to get to the intellectually satisfying part.
The Good and The Could Have Been Better:
One thing that the movie did have in its favor was a good moral. Movies targeted at children usually include some sort of heavy-handed lesson, and this one seems genuinely useful instead of recycled and cliché. Thinking back on childhood, I can recall times when I felt embarrassed by a friend as well as times when I was the source of embarrassment. People of any age should be able to relate to conflict that arises when personal relationships seem to interfere with professional success. The “staying true to your friends” message—offered with absolutely no subtlety—should stick with kids after the credits roll. And that’s a good thing.
It was a little weird, of course, that once again, Lightning McQueen was the one learning the lesson since this time around he was not really the protagonist of the story. Seems kind of unfair that he’s doomed to learn lesson upon lesson about what a jerk he is, when, really, Mater’s actions were objectionable (even if his intentions were good).
Mater also learned something—he learned to be true to himself and confident in his abilities. The only catch is that Mater already had a good heart and excellent self-esteem before others began to tell him flat out that he was an idiot. I’m really not quite sure what Mater took away from the whole experience since he was satisfied with himself and his life from the outset. Others learned the lesson, not Mater, and this may be a hint that Mater is not really a suitable protagonist. Because McQueen is one character who misjudges Mater, much of the story is seen from his point of view, but the story isn’t about him, and he’s not involved in the significant action. The movie would have benefited from a script rewrite to make the character experiencing growth the central player in the action as well.
Best Action Sequence:
Mater’s escape from the secret meeting and attempt to warn McQueen was delightful and exciting to watch.
Best Joke:
For the most part, Mater was the only character in Cars who amused me, but he’s the kind of car who makes you smile more often than laugh out loud, so when he takes center stage, the comedy seems hokey overall, and lots of jokes fall flat. I think my favorite moment came when Mater seemed to know the correct response to the spy’s coded contact message simply because of his own mechanical knowledge.
Best Scene:
The last big action scene in London was riveting and exciting. I enjoyed it, and I’m sure kids loved it.
Best Surprise:
The movie didn’t offer many surprises, but I enjoyed the way the table was decorated during the big meeting scene. I’m not sure that actually counts as a surprise, but I felt mild surprise as I realized that more thought than I’d initially suspected had gone into the story.
Best Scene Visually:
The first part of the movie that I loved was Mater and McQueen’s arrival in Japan. Even my two-year-old was impressed by the vibrant colors, the attention to detail, the overwhelming, almost hypnotic effect as the cars raced past the urban scenery. “Oooh! Wow!” she cooed. I wish I had seen the movie in 3D. (If only my two-year-old would wear the glasses!)
The Performances:
Larry the Cable Guy is good as Mater, just as likeable as he was in the first movie. Owen Wilson does a great job reprising Lightning McQueen but he had relatively few lines this time around. He does have a great moment near the end of the film at the conclusion of the race in Italy.
Michael Caine is good as usual as Finn McMissile, and I really liked Emily Mortimer’s performance as Holly Shiftwell, so much so that I spent the entire movie wondering in the back of my mind who was voicing Holly. I couldn’t quite place her, but I thought she delivered her lines wonderfully well.
John Turturro is as over-the-top as always as Italian racing sensation Francesco Bernoulli, Eddie Izzard surprisingly inconspicuous as Sir Miles Axelrod.
Joe Mantegna, I am beginning to think, has the most recognizable voice in the world. I can always tell it’s him, and whenever I ask myself, “Is that really Joe Mantegna or is it just someone trying to sound like a mobster?” it’s always Joe Mantegna.
Overall:
Cars is a far better movie than Cars 2, but I’ve always found Cars kind of boring and slow, and Cars 2 is fast-paced and fun once it gets going (which admittedly takes a while). I truly enjoyed watching Cars 2, particularly once the story began to click about half-way through the movie. Even early on when the story seemed disjointed and the scenes fell a bit flat, the visuals and the sound were still stunning, more than worth the price of admission.