Cars (2006)

With almost every major studio coming up with its own computer animated feature nowadays, competition on the animation field is tough. Very tough. Cars, supposedly planned to mark the final collaboration between long-time companions Disney and Pixar, was originally scheduled for a 2005 fall release. The fact The Mouse and The Lamp decided to push back its release date to the summer of 2006 wasn’t a good sign, according to experts. It certainly wasn’t intended to make way for the mediocre Chicken Little (a solo effort by Disney). Was this delay meant to improve the already extensive imagery or to fix the story? And admittedly: the teaser trailer that showed up right before the release of The Incredibles wasn’t very promising. The cars looked like the lead in Fergie’s children books Budgie. How on earth could talking cars steal the heart of any audience?

Central character is Lightning McQueen (voiced by Owen Wilson), a shiny red stud of a race car and a rookie on the race track. When a very important race ends up as a tie with two competitors, a second decisive race in California is scheduled to take place a week later. Lightning sets off with his truck and friend Mack (John Ratzenberg, who is present in about every Disney/Pixar film there is). Due to Mack’s exhaustion caused by Lightning’s competitive spirit the two lose track of each other and Lightning ends up on Route 66 (the original title of Cars) and the lonesome town of Radiator Springs. Lightning gets himself a speeding ticket and has to perform parole duty in order to get out of the sleepy little town and get to California for the big race.

Almost every Pixar film has had some incredible improvements in the technical field, indirectly booing the competition. Monsters Inc.’s novelty was the realistic focus on fury animals. Finding Nemo was aimed at making computer generated water look realistic and The Incredibles zoomed in on texture and hair. Cars has so many technical novelties it makes your eyes hurt. Most remarkable is the emphasis on shiny objects and surfaces. The cars look shiny new and the animators really took a close and detailed look at the way light reflects on reflective surfaces and metal. Secondly, the use of neon lights is stunning. Then there’s the incredible look of rocks (modelled after cars), trees, grass and skies. Does computer animation get any better?

Yes, on the technical level Cars is top notch and each and every frame is amazingly detailed and jaw-droppingly stunning. Every frame of this two hour film took a batch of super computers approximately 17 hours to render. However, there is some ambivalence when it comes to the screenplay of Cars. On the one hand, the writers used just about every joke (inside or not) imaginable and created a life-like world that only consists of tires, steel and polish. On the other hand, the screenplay is very standard and the moral is way too obvious. Lightning has to find out the truth about love and friendship and the importance of slowing down in life.

What is also an important element in liking or disliking the story is the all-American nature of the screenplay. Basically, Radiator Springs is an all-American Midwest town and some of its inhabitants are all-American (rather cliché even) characters. This may not suit the taste of a worldwide audience. It also keeps the viewer at a certain distance from the characters and their storylines, something that was no the case in recent Pixar films such as Finding Nemo and even The Incredibles. This may also lie within the fact that the key characters (or, in fact, all characters if you wipe out the small cameo of the birds from For the Birds) are machines. There is a limit to how far cars can steal a show (despite the creative use of all types of cars, buses and tractors).

Director John Lasseter (now the head of the Disney Animation department and one of the founders of Pixar as well as the director of Toy Story, Toy Story 2 and A Bug’s Life ) does a decent job making this machine world come to life. Even though the screenplay isn’t flawless, Pixar is still laps ahead of its competition. Make sure to get to the movie theater in time, since you’ll probably get the teaser trailer of Ratatouille (marking the renewed collaboration of Disney and Pixar) and the Oscar nominated short One Man Band. Also make sure to stay seated when the credits roll for a nice gimmick concerning Pixar classics. The funniest thing happened when I finally got outside and I noticed the shiny cars in traffic didn’t have faces.

Directed by: John Lasseter
Starring the voice talents of: Owen Wilson, Paul Newman, Bonnie Hunt, Larry the Cableguy, John Ratzenberger, Michael Keaton
Runtime: 116’
Release Dates: US: 9 June, UK: 28 July, The Netherlands: 21 June
Official Website

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