Susan Year Itch

Cars Are More Interesting Than People

John Lasseter, 2006

I haven’t been good about watching movies lately because I’ve been hooked on "Veronica Mars". Every minute that I’m in my house, I want to be watching an episode. It took a trip to Raleigh to visit my friend Kate to get me away from Mars and into Cars.* Before I delve into my thoughts about Pixar’s newest feature film, I’d like to offer the caveat that I may have missed vital important plot points due to the TWENTY BABBLING BRATS BEHIND ME, which brings to mind the pillow I once cross-stitched that said “The worst thing about kids movies are the kids.”

But as usual, Pixar delivers a multilayered experience, fun for the parents, fun for the kids, and visually stunning to behold. Cars, however, even tops Pixar’s prior efforts by including the new “Redneck” layer, adding a whole compendium of NASCAR jokes of whose presence in the film I was dimly aware but whose subtleties I couldn’t even begin to comprehend.

Actually, to be honest, I didn’t find Cars nearly as funny or clever as its predecessors. It had one or two really standout characters – Mater the bucktoothed tow truck and Luigi and Guido, the Italian racing enthusiasts – but it didn’t quite barrage you with interesting stuff the way that Monsters, Inc. or Toy Story did (or The Incredibles or A Bug’s Life or Finding Nemo or basically anything they’ve ever done). It seems like Pixar chooses subjects that afford them a practically unlimited range of creativity, but the car theme got just a tad boring. There’s only so many fresh things you can do with a set of characters based on the nationality of their make and model (or the stereotypes of the people that typically drive them).

However! The theme of Cars was, as expected, a good lesson for kids but not a totally tired cliché for parents. Owen Wilson basically recycles his Shanghai Noon / Shanghai Knights character to play sensational racing rookie Lightning McQueen, but it works for him.** Bonnie Hunt got a little gipped with her personality-less character, Sally, the sexy Porsche who predictably wins Lightning’s heart, but Paul Newman was fantastic as Doc Hudson, the bristly old town judge.

I’m not going to spoil anything by telling you that Lightning McQueen is a little too cocky in the beginning and has to learn a lesson to care about others blah-de-blah. You’ll figure that out in the first thirty seconds. But the ending is not so cookie-cutter and catapults the movie from a three- to a four-star rating.

Toy Story taught audiences to stick around during Pixar final credits sequences, but Cars goes above and beyond the normal computer animated “bloopers” for some of the funniest cameos in the entire movie. It reminded me of my friend Kelly’s "Babysitting Strategy", where if you are a super-fun babysitter for the last hour that you’re there, the kids will forget how boring you were the rest of the time and report to their parents that they had a lot of fun. I left the theater wiping tears away (from laughter! I’m no softy!), and it took me a few days to realize that the first three quarters of the movie is kinda forgettable. But, again, I spent a lot of the movie vowing never to allow my future children to yell unchecked in a movie theater and visualizing myself getting up and giving the little rapscallion’s mother a piece of my mind,*** so I may have missed a few of the comedy gems that Pixar is famous for.

One final note: No one should ever, and I mean EVER, be allowed to use the tired old “Men will never ask for directions” gag EVER AGAIN. They might as well have thrown in a bit about women drivers.

*HAHAHA

**Although, Lightning had none of Wilson’s quirky good looks and was the most boring-looking character in the whole production. I also would have really appreciated a cameo of thoughtful, hot younger brother Luke, but it didn’t happen.

***I would never do it though. I kept thinking about how glad that poor mom probably was just to be out of the house and looking at something that wasn’t the g.d. Wiggles.