Cars 2

Five years after the original Cars, Pixar has introduced a second installment to go along with the original. While a lot of critics panned the story saying it is the weakest of any Pixar film, I found myself looking forward to seeing Cars 2 once I saw the spy aspect to the movie. I love the spy type movies from James Bond to even some TV shows that have been about spies. This made me definitely intrigued to see how Pixar would tell a spy story within the world of Cars. While I probably would say that the Cars franchise is probably the weakest of the Pixar films, but that is not to say this is a terrible movie like some made it out to be.

The voice acting does a grat job just as one would expect from a Pixar movie. Owen Wilson reprises his role of Lightning McQueen, but an interesting aspect of the movie is that where McQueen was the focus in the first film, this time he ends up being a supporting character. With this change Wilson really did not bring anything new to McQueen and so we did not really see anymore character development. Cars 2 focuses its story on Mater being pulled into the world of espionage, with Larry the Cable Guy giving his voice once again to the character. While the character of Mater is far from deep, Larry the Cable Guy playing basically himself in what he would be if a car. He uses a great redneck feeling that at times pushes the boundaries of annoyance, but he keeps it controlled so well as to not cross that annoyance line. The supporting cast of voices all seem to fit in well with the rest of the cast that everything flowed nicely. John Turturro in the role of Francesco and Michael Caine as Finn McMissile work well with the cast and I would have liked to see even more interaction between Francesco and McQueen as well as Finn interacting with Mater.

Along with the voice actors I would have to say it is interesting to see the Pixar effect has done with voice acting. Before Toy Story most of the Disney animated movies did not have neccesarily the big name stars, but used voice specific actors. While there was the occasional star like Robin Williams as the genie in Aladdin, today almost all animated movies are now using stars and big names because that is partly how they can really promote the movies because of the competition for movies for families has stiffened greatly. So any animated movie you will see at least two big name stars to draw in as many ticket sales as possible. Along the same lines with the cristicsims out there for Cars 2 is that Pixar upon the release of Toy Story sixteen years ago they took animation to places it had not been to before. With most any Pixar movie it has its moments where they are taking animation to a new level, but now the other animaiton studios have caught up to what Pixar has been doing so the quality of other studio animated films is just as strong as what Pixar has been putting out.

The storyfor Cars 2 while enjoyable to me with the whole spy aspect was not as stroung as it could have been. Granted I know this movie was geared as a kids movie I would have really liked to have seen a deeper character development between the so called evil cars "lemons" and the mastermind over tham all to even the character development with the spy based cars, instead the story really glossed over the surface. This depth could have made the movie better in my eyes, but it would have taken it from good to great. While Cars highlight was it side characters, Cars 2 almost abandons them. McMissile is a moving plot device and little more. Shiftwell is supposed to be a love interest but nothing truly develops and she lacks any interesting moments. Because of this there are almost no funny littel side scenes where characters have fun just being themselves. Instead, most of the humor is derived from seeing Mater do silly things.

Spies and Cars seems like it would weork really well together. After all, any Bond or Bourne film easily show why the two go together. The opening scene on the drilling platform is easily the best scene in the whole movie with the fast chase and all the cool gadgets. But they weren't able to properly combine the racing and spy elements, it was almost as if two movies were being ran sumultaneously. There is too much spy stuff for the racing to be interesting and it becomes pointless. It may have worked better for Pixar to simply set Cars 2 as a spy movie set in the Cars universe and used McQueen and his friends in a cameo role or a small story arc.

Cars 2 is not a great movie, but a good one. It ends up being an enjoyable movie for everyone in the family. While I enjoyed the spy aspect of this movie I would have loved them to have done more with it. I am giving Cars 2 three buckets of popcorn out of five. This movie while not as good as some of the otherPixar movies is a fun family film that your family can enjoy any night. We have already added this movie to our DVD collection.