Cars (2006)

Movie: Cars (2006)
Nationality: American
Streaming availability: iTunes and Blinkx
Running time: 1 hr 56 min
Rating: 3/5

Lightning McQueen (voice of Owen Wilson) is a conceited rookie race car who, as Pixar's weakest feature to date opens, is racing against two other cars (yes, this world is all anthromorphic vehicles), Chick Hicks (Michael Keaton) and The King (Richard Petty), for the most important racing trophy in this world, the Piston Cup.  However, this race is without a winner, so a tie-breaker race is scheduled in California.  Along the way, he is detoured to a town on Route 66 so desolate it's not even charted: Radiator Springs.  Because he wrecks the town trying to find his way back, the town patriarch, a 1951 Hudson Hornet named Doc Hudson (Paul Newman), sentences him to fix things up.  Along the way, he makes friends and learns lessons.

When I was fourteen - and I lagged behind three years in emotional maturity, making me still a child - I loved this movie.  But now that I've matured, I must confess I don't really like it anymore.  This being Pixar, the animation is eye-popping and the perfectly cast big-name stars are as good as expected - especially Larry the Cable Guy in his only above-average movie so far, lovably voicing a rusty tow truck, and Newman in a film that came to be his last.  He died of lung cancer in 2008, and even in a film just a hint above average proved he could be interesting onscreen.

The good outweighs the bad, yes, but not terribly so; because for all the good animation and voiceover work, the plot is somewhat tired.  As such, the humor is not very highbrow.  In other Pixar movies, we've had more sophisticated humor, but this takes to bodily-function jokes.  The humor is also a bit hypocritical, because it also includes variations on vulgar slang (how was this rated G?), but then it also has some jokes at a very young level.  Who is the real audience?  Fans of NASCAR and other racing enterprises, I guess, because the funniest jokes here are about racing.  In short, this film, which was a huge success and had the largest marketing campaign in history, is only a hair above average.  But ever since it was released, Pixar came out with flat-out masterpieces.