CARS isn’t just a great animated flick, it’s a great movie that’s not just a, you’ll pardon the expression, character-driven story, but also an irresistible paean to life in the slow lane. The jaw-droppingly detailed and inventive animation takes second place to the dialogue, which, along with the 116-minute running time, might make this less than perfect for younger kids. For the rest of us, however, it’s a winner.
The lead car is Lighting McQueen (Owen Wilson), and though he is a very fast precision race car, he’s just not that smart when it comes to people skills. Still, he’s the rookie who came out of nowhere to be a contender for the racing’s most prestigious award, the Piston Cup, and as the film opens, he’s also the victim of both his own hubris and a twist of fate in that race. It’s that last that sends him on a cross-country journey with an unexpected detour to the remote, once-booming desert town of Radiator Springs, just off Route 66, and completely off the radar of the cars that zip by on the interstate just a few miles away.
It’s not an auspicious arrival, involving as it does barbed wire, a cop car in hot pursuit, and damage to the town’s main street. It gets worse when Lightning is sentenced to repave the road before he’ll be allowed to continue on to California and the race of his life. He’s stuck in the middle of nowhere with an eccentric fleet of locals who have never heard of him and couldn’t care less about the race.
Of course, Lighting eventually starts to undergo an attitude adjustment, especially when Sally (Bonnie Hunt) the gorgeous Porsche who is Radiator Spring’s only lawyer and the owner of the Cozy Cone Motel (as in orange traffic hazard cones) begins to take a shine to him. That she is also the one who talked the local judge, Doc Hudson (Paul Newman), as in doctor of internal combustion, into passing the repaving sentence on him suddenly doesn’t seem to matter quite as much after she talks Lightning into taking a drive with her that doesn’t involve who gets there first.
The voice casting is brilliant and the animation captures real personalities in automobile grills, wheels, and windshields. Wilson is winsomely thick-headed, going from cocky to sweet while hitting all the right notes in between. Newman gets the imperious crustiness right, as well as the soft mushy spot right next to his carburetor. And the animators have wisely decided to give his car persona the eyes that are just the right dazzling shade of blue. Hunt’s Sally is smart and sweet with more than a dash of deadpan sass. There is a wistful tone in her voice when Sally is telling Lightning why she settled in the middle of the desert that is just beautiful and while the least showy of any of the characters, is a terrific performance judged against any other film character, animated or not.
As for the rest of the cast, who supply most of the dada-esque humor, there is Pixar veteran John Ratzenberger as Lightning’s pal Mack (as in truck), Cheech Marin playing pretty much himself as Ramone, the low-rider proprietor of Radiator Spring’s body paint shop, and George Carlin as the hippie VW bus who sells alternative fuel, which turns out to be more timely than even the writers might have imagined when penning this. It is a tribute to those writers and everyone else involved that Mater, the broken-down, buck-toothed tow truck played by Larry the Cable Guy, never becomes overbearing with his country hick schtick. Instead, he’s actually kinda cute, but not as cute as the herd of tractors that roam a landscape that includes mesas with vaguely automobile-like shapes and, in a typical example of Pixar puckishness, a formation that evokes the Cadillac Desert sculpture/installation.
CARS is heartwarming without being messy about it, and it gets a message across without getting persnickety. It’s all about following your bliss without taking yourself too seriously.
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