In the end, it doesn't even Mater
There’s one thing I unabashedly enjoy about Pixar’s worst film to date: The almost pornographic way it raises uncomfortable questions about the cosmology of the Cars world. Are all these vehicles of the same species? How does Car life begin and end? I assume they reproduce; how so? What is their lifespan? What is their purpose on planet Earth? (Can we even call it Earth in the Cars universe?) Why does their world so closely mirror ours when Car needs are so different human needs? How much of Cars history mirrors human history?
There are no good answers to these questions, and yet I must keep digging. I am compelled. It gets strange, man; each detail is weirder than the last. Their are rabbit holes out on the Internet for those intellectually curious and brave enough to ask the tough questions. (Example: There’s circumstantial evidence for Cars Nazis.)
I actually burst out laughing during an early segment when we see the corpse of a murdered car. It has been crushed into a cube. I choose to read it as a Simpsons reference.
So if you like poking fun at the absurd nonsense of John Lasseter’s Cars world, you’re going to have a field day with this one. But if there’s anything else you remotely care about, you’ll be disappointed, possibly even outraged.
The worst part of Cars 1 was Larry the Cable Guy’s Mater, an unfunny caricature who wore out his welcome in one film as a side character. Great news: he’s the star of the sequel, pinned between a ludicrous James Bond parody and an unearned emotional arc of determining what it means to be Lightning McQueen’s best friend. It is even more exhausting and lazy than it seems on paper (which is really saying something).
The story is utter farcical hogwash. For over a hundred minutes, the movie tries to maintain a plot built around idiotic misunderstandings and bumbling. Worst of all, almost none of it has anything to do with racing, the ostensible raison d’etre of the Cars universe.
(And if my vitriol is turned up to 11 here, it’s in part because of the movie’s role in ending Pixar’s Midas streak: Ratatouille, Wall-E, Up, and Toy Story 3 preceded this.)
The movie is competent on the visual front, which almost makes it worse that the story is so airheaded. Pixar’s technical proficiency and CGI chops carry the film’s narrative corpse like Weekend at Bernie’s. The lighting is neat; the sound design pretty solid; the exotic locales appealingly designed and rendered.
Then again, lots of pretty things are ugly on the inside.
Is It Good?
Not Good (2/8)
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