Cars

Car Crash
Adam Valen Levinson
Freelance Movie Critic
      I tried to like it, I really did. But it just didn’t work.
      From Pixar Animations, the Oscar-decorated company responsible for the Toy Stories, Finding Nemo, A Bug’s Life, Monsters, Inc. and The Incredibles, comes a film that will not stand the test of time.
      Not even 96 minutes.
      After about half an hour, the film begins to run out of gas, abandoning the childish exuberance of the opening scene for a more serious, but still transparently clichéd, story line. The novelty of anthropomorphized cars wears off for the movie-goers too old to care about the backs of Rice Krispies boxes as the dangerously mature plot kicks in. Alas, it gives me great sorrow to report that Cars will miss every audience.
      Lightning McQueen, an arrogant race car voiced by Owen Wilson, is on a quest to become the first rookie ever to win the Piston Cup. Needing to get to California for the big race, Lightning runs into trouble, and wreaks havoc in the time-forgotten town of Radiator Springs. For the film’s rising action, the town court orders him to fix their road before he is set free, a task McQueen considers unsuitable for a race car of his celebrity. But as time wears on, he gets to know the cars from “hillbilly hell,” develops as a person, and does many other things the target audience just won’t care about. The kids who want fast cars just want fast cars and bright colors, not a story about the prise de conscience of a red, computer animated automobile. And their parents won’t be able to breathe through the unceasing waves of platitude.
      Cars’ seven writing credits is a trademark of mediocrity at its worst: a script written by committee is destined for the shredder – or, apparently, theaters nationwide. The predictable story is as common as a left turn in a NASCAR race. And while hackneyed repetition can still be entertaining for a younger audience, automotive love interests cannot.
      Yet, amidst all this scrap metal, there is still the faint glimmer of creativity. Beginning with imposing human facial features on cars, the Pixar team continues to impress. Each frame has a vibrancy, each scene a bounce, that few other companies can match. Little things, like the Ferrari-obsessed, Italian tire shop owners, are still funny. And when the race car learns “cow tipping” means tipping over stupid tractors, even the sound asleep may chuckle.
      Today is a sad day for animation; has it all been done? Have our culture and film industry run out of ideas? In the Year of the Sequel, Cars seemed potentially fresh and buoyant. But no, it was stale and sank. Perhaps, Pixar will rekindle their creative fires. Until then, your kids would be better entertained with the back of the Rice Krispies box.

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Cars
96 (Painful) Minutes
Release Date: June 9, 2006