A Franchise That's Running On Fumes

'Cars 2' is a magnificantly animated Pixar feature with a whimsical and complex spy game plot built around a premise that doesn't deserve either.  Oh sure, John Lasseter has crafted a competently made thriller with striking visuals and an inventive flare for stunts, but it all unfolds with the manic pace of a kid with an attention deficit smashing his toy cars together.  Don't get me wrong, I loved playing with my cars as a kid too, but therein lies my fundamental dislike for the 'Cars' franchise; I always imagined people driving them.

My cynical attitude doesn't stem from the way the movies are made or with Pixar's eagerness to please the audience.  Indeed, Pixar is known for win after win with state of the art, vibrant animation coupled with emotional, effective story telling.  No, my problem with 'Cars' and 'Cars 2' is with the initial idea.  Most of Pixar's previous works have crafted stories around living things.  The 'Toy Story' movies are an exception, but even then, there are human beings involved that have an emotional connection to the toys and the toys, in turn, depend on their need to be played with.  It's a symbiotic relationship with true resonance for the audience.  The toys come to life because kids often imagine the toys as being alive, doing the things we see them do. 

The thing that stops me from enjoying 'Cars' is that I am distracted from the story with too many questions.  Where are all the humans?  How do these cars drive?  Who makes them?  Do they need to sleep and eat?  There is a scene early in 'Cars 2' where Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) and his girlfriend (a CAR has a girlfriend!) Sally sit at a table at a restaurant.  Do they NEED that table?  For what?  Who pumps gas into these cars?  And just what ARE they for that matter?  I have never been clear on whether these are real cars or toy cars being played with by the hands of some large, invisible child.  There's another issue;  'Cars 2' provides no sense of scale.  How big is everything?  The cars travel the world, but, who's world?  Ours?  The first movie took place in large dessert landscapes so that the cars, whatever their actual size, could come and go and didn't necessarily need to fit in against anything.  In 'Cars 2,' the cars are literally trapsing the globe, but never quite look big enough, or small enough, from scene to scene.  Some buildings massively swallow the characters and some look as if the cars come right up to the third or fourth level.

The plot this time around is a great deal more involving than its predecessor.  I found the original to be dreadfully boring and overlong and it pandered condescendingly to it's audience with a message of slowing your life down and appreciating the bygone era of the all-american highway.  Pixar, cranking out at least one picture a year, doesn't seem to live by the message they peddled.  In 'Cars 2,' John Lasseter and Pixar have overcompensated for the meandering pace of the first movie with a complex spy-movie plot that is way too mature for kids and too familiar for adults.  It involves a significant amount of slick espionage and confidently animated action, but all that excitement is wasted on yet another heavy-handed message on the importance of alternative fuel and the evil oil corporations.  There are some master talents providing voicework here, with the likes of Michael Caine as Finn McMissile, John Turturro as Francesco Bernoulli and the wonderful Emily Mortimer as Holley Shiftwell (get it?).  The dialogue issues in-jokes that will be lost on youngsters and aren't funny enough to inspire laughs from the grown-ups whereas most of the sight gags rely on car humor that, again, children don't really think of.  That really grinds my gears.  Do you see what I did there?  You get the idea.

This is largely considered Pixar's biggest flop to date and the numbers certainly confirm as much.  I attribute that to what I consider to be a fatal mistake; 'Cars 2' puts Mater (Larry The Cable Guy) front and center.  In movies where there is already enough difficulty establishing characters we're supposed to care about out of inanimate objects, why would John Lasseter and Ben Queen, who wrote the screenplay, make the most annoying character the star of the sequel?  Larry the Cable Guy is a one-trick pony who's stand-up gigs, which were arguably never funny in the first place, have long since grown tired.  He essentially does an impression of himself rather than voice an original character.  How many times can the lines "get 'ir done" or "that's funny right there, I don't care who ya are" actually inspire laughs?  Yet here they are, pulled straight from raunchy stand-up routines and put into a kids' movie multiple times. 

Obviously from the tone of my review, I was not the correct audience for the 'Cars' movies.  They are, to me, Pixar's biggest miscalculation.  I don't believe that the studio has lost its ability to create wonderfully animated, emotionally resonant features, but I also don't believe they are above taking advantage of an easily-merchandisable, money making franchise either.  That's the problem here I think; the priorities of the studio were misplaced with dollar signs.  Ironic then, that it has made Pixar its lowest profit margain yet.  But if for every 'Cars' movie there are three 'Toy Stories' or a 'Wall*E', then that aint half bad.  If Pixar wants to continue with sequels, I certainly look forward to the next chapter of 'Finding Nemo' or even seeing what 'The Incredibles' are up to now days.  I suggest though, that if they want to stay ahead of Dreamworks Animation, they leave the Cars in the junk yard.