Cars

Othniel — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 06:51:21 +0000

Pixar is at it again

Horsepower, speed, chrome, and skid marks. No, I’m not talking about King’s car, or his underwear for that matter. I’m talking about Pixar’s newest release, Cars. They packed the cast full of big name celebrities from the big screen, TV, radio, and several racing circuits. There are so many running Pixar jokes in this movie that I couldn’t even begin to count them all after only watching it once.

Plot

Have you seen Doc Hollywood? It’s fairly similar to that, but without all the people. It’s called Cars, get it? The movie follows Lightning McQueen (voice by Owen Wilson), a cocky rookie racecar on his way to California for the Piston Cup. On his way he gets lost one night because he can’t see where he is going, his headlights are only stickers. He ends up causing a lot of damage to this small town of Radiator Springs and is sentenced to community service by repairing the main road he tore up. After a while he begins to make friends with the locals and eventually makes it to his big race.

Visual

AMAZING. If Pixar were to leave out the cars and just show some short clips of the Radiator Springs area you would probably think it was real. People who really pay attention to the background will pick out car shapes in the mountains and the rock bluffs. The little VW Beetle bugs flying around in some of the scenes are hilarious, rather than contrails in the sky left from jets you can see clouds in the shape of tire tracks. Pixar quadrupled (that’s 4x for those of you who have trouble with big words) their processing power after making The Incredibles and they still spent an average of 17 hours rendering each frame of the movie. And it shows in the final product. The detail that they put into the cars, the buildings, and especially the scenery is amazing.

Audio

Lots of good stuff here, they have some good music that really helps set the mood for whatever might be happening at the time. Nothing really memorable about the music, but at least none of it seemed out of place. Lots of country and slow music to describe the old town of Radiator Springs and especially when Mater (Larry the Cable Guy) and Lightning go “Tractor Tipping.” And the music speeds up when Lightning gets back on the race track. The voice over acting matched seamlessly with the mouths on the cars so there are no problems there.

Acting

Woah, how many actors and celebrities can you fit into one movie? Owen Wilson, Larry the Cable Guy, Tony Shalhoub, George Carlin, John Ratzenberger (Isn’t he in every Pixar movie?), Michael Keaton, Richard & Mrs. Petty, Darrell Waltrip, Tom & Ray (Click & Clack from Car Talk) Magliozzi, Jay Leno, Michael Schumacher, and Mario Andretti just to name… more than a few. Pixar recognizes that John Ratzenberger is in every movie they have made, and they make a joke about it at the end of the movie while the credits are rolling. The only thing that struck me as odd through the whole movie was that the fire truck, Red, never said anything. And I didn’t find out until later why. The movie is dedicated to Joe Ranft who was the voice of Red, and the Peterbilt at the beginning of the movie, as well as being the Co-director of the movie, died in a car crash in August 2005. They had to cut Red’s lines because they didn’t want to replace him. The appearance of racing celebrities throughout the movie adds a touch of fun. I would have acted much the same way that Luigi and Guido did if Michael Schumacher showed up at my door too.

Summary

Great, fun movie. There are jokes for the entire family. Car lovers will find nearly every kind imaginable in the movie at one point or another. Mater’s signature voice adds the hillbilly humor everyone loves and will make you “Happier than a tornado in a trailer park.” There is a good lesson in the movie about friendship and respect too… somewhere. I was too busy laughing to notice. I give it 5 “Pit Stop?”s out of 5