Cars

I suppose it's about time I got around to reviewing one of the movies created by the fine people at Pixar Animation Studios - and there's no better place to begin than with everyone's favorite, Cars!

Air McQueen

What's that you say? 2006's Cars isn't the best or most popular Pixar film? The heck you say!

Perusing the inter-webs, there seems to be a loose consensus (but no mandate, by any stretch) that many find the film to be too predictable, with a pedestrian storyline and broad characters. These are charges that I don't necessarily disagree with, but the other leading theory behind Cars' unpopularity is the blandness of its central gimmick, that of a world inhabited exclusively by living vehicles. To this I proclaim "CHALLENGE!" I would argue that, up until the point of Cars' release, all of Pixar's films were possessing of central gimmicks that were of questionable originality.

• Living toys? Seen that in cartoons and TV shows plenty of times.
• Intelligent bugs? Yawn.
• Monsters scared of children? Big deal.
• Talking fish? Is that even a gimmick?
• A family of superheroes? Comics had been doing that for decades.

But the secret of Pixar's popularity was never its gimmicks (besides, perhaps, the fact that Toy Story was the first entirely computer-animated film,) but in the execution. People love the Toy Story franchise because of its clever writing and sharply-drawn characters, not because it's about toys coming to life; the gimmick is a source for gags, not heart.


Get to da choppa!!

And that seems to be where many people find Cars comes up short: with the all-important "charm factor" (an especially essential part of the film-going experience when discussing Disney.) Though I don't dislike the film, I do sense that at some point the filmmakers let themselves coast on automotive-themed gags and puns, more so than in most of their other movies. I also think, however, that a lot of displeasure with the film may simply come down to taste. Many viewers simply never warmed up to Lightning McQueen and Mater like they did to Woody and Buzz, or Marlin and Dory (although I'll never understand anyone who prefers A Bug's Life to Cars - especially considering that fact that these "cars" may actually be highly-evolved bugs anyway - but I digress.)


Ha ha, get it?

Something that I've always admired about Cars is the way it builds its world. I'm not talking about the humanity-free version of Earth the film exists within, but the town of Radiator Springs. Once McQueen (voiced by Owen Wilson) reaches this central setting, the whole thing seems to click. Each of the oddball residents of "the cutest little town in Carburetor County" reveals a different aspect of the town itself. There's the slightly-unhinged old-timer who nevertheless retains knowledge of the town's past (Katherine Helmond's Lizzie,) the hospitably simple blue-collar worker (Larry The Cable Guy's Mater, a character who retroactively gives the comedian a reason to be a thing,) the town's military nut and its anti-establishment hippie (Paul Dooley's Sarge and George Carlin's Fillmore, respectively) who still manage to get along despite their clashing ideologies, and the immigrants running their business with a passion that outweighs their profits (Tony Shalhoub and Guido Quaroni as Luigi and Guido,) to name a few.


Round up the usual suspects

Dare I suggest that Radiator Springs could represent some sort of American microcosm?

It's possible, as Cars tells a story that is very much rooted in the American southwest. Radiator Springs, a singularly unique creation in the Pixar canon, is itself an amalgamation of a hundred different roadside towns that have gone to dust after decades of neglect and isolation. The fact that this "town of crazies" may actually exist somewhere along the remnants of Route 66 (as flesh-and-blood humans, of course) is an idea that is alien to many film-goers, both worldwide and in the United States.


The truth is out there...

Herein, I believe, lies the misunderstanding that Cars has with its audience: the big beating heart of the film is not the story of Lightning McQueen finding love and peace in a small town (an old idea lifted form 1991's Doc Hollywood, among others,) but in the story of Radiator Springs and it's forgotten souls, left stranded out in the middle of a nowhere created by progress (represented by the interstate system.) That those who haven't packed-up and left town have instead stayed and remained hopeful is the real heroism on display, not in the frenetic racing scenes. This story is explicitly spelled-out in the "Our Town" sequence, and the fact that it's presented in a song-montage relatively late in the film makes me wonder if many viewers take this entire plot as mere window-dressing, a backdrop for McQueen's story to unfold in front of. This is a presumption that gets everything as ass-backwards as Mater's rear-view driving; it's actually McQueen's simple morality-play that leads to the bigger story as the film plays out.

Desolation row

When all is said and done, the years seem to have been good to the film: Pixar has gone on to make many better and many worse films. Despite one of those cinematic turds being the films' own sequel, the franchise lives on through its popularity with children, racing enthusiasts, and the success of an astonishingly-realized themed land at Disney California Adventure. One can hope that future installments take into account that the true heart of the matter lies not under the hood, but out on The Mother Road.