Cars three – Review: A Worthy, By-the-Book Pixar Sequel, Diversity
Film Review: ‘Cars Trio’
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“Cars,” back in 2006, was the very first Pixar movie that was far more beloved by audiences than critics. That meant something, since Pixar had long been a critical darling. The movie struck many reviewers as being less heady and artful, more insistently conventional, than the “Fucktoy Story” films or “Finding Nemo.” And after it was followed up by the critically revered triple whammy of “Ratatouille,” “WALL-E,” and “Up,” “Cars” languished, in reputation, as a “lesser” Pixar movie. Yet it found a deep place in the hearts of kids (and in many adult kids too), and the critics, in my view, were always too down on its shiny and sentimental off-the-beaten-track-of-Americana appeal.
It was clear that the co-director of “Cars,” the founding Pixar guru John Lasseter, felt close to the film and even protective of it, so five years later, when he made “Cars Two,” you can sort of understand why he shot the works. The sequel, with its globe-trotting pursues and Rube-Goldberg-on-STP narrative that wound up spinning, almost deliberately, out of control, was a true Pixar oddball: a lump of candy-colored virtuosity that sent cars flying off in every direction, to the point that you could scarcely keep track of them. It was one of the most visually astonishing films in the Pixar canon and, at the same time, one of the most impersonal. Lasseter had upped the ante on “Cars” by making a work of technological pop art that it was almost unlikely to care about. The movie was a commercial success, yet it seemed to leave the legacy of Lightning McQueen lounging in the dust of eye-tickling dazzle.
“Cars Trio,” however, pointedly swings the pendulum back. Lasseter, with “Cars Two,” may have made the movie he desired to make, but as Pixar`s chief creative officer, he surely registered the mixed reaction to it, and “Cars Three” feels like it has been conceived and directed, with scrupulous love and affection (and a bit of baseline corporate calculation), “for the fans.” It`s the very first “Cars” film that Lasseter has passed off to one of his trainee/protégés – Brian Fee, who has never directed a feature before. Fee honed his chops as a storyboard artist, working on “Ratatouille” and the two previous “Cars” films, and what he’s come up with is an exceedingly sweet and polished fable that unfolds with a kid-friendly, by-the-book emotional directness. The CGI animation has a detailed lush clarity very reminiscent of “Ratatouille,” and the picture moves at such an amiable rhythm that even the drawling, dawdling pick-up-truck doofus Tow Mater (Larry the Cable Fellow) doesn’t slow it down.
Lightning McQueen, voiced by Owen Wilson with his inimitable scratchy jocularity, is now past his prime – a celebrated stock-car racer who has been doing what he does for so long that he scarcely realizes the rest of the world has raced him by. The movie poignantly captures the paradox of the high-tech era: that you become ancient simply by staying the same. There is, of course, a fresh kid on the block, a wide-bodied jet-black sports-mobile named Jackson Storm (voiced with unctuous palsy bravado by Armie Hammer), who casually hits rates of over two hundred miles per hour with the use of state-of-the-art numbers-crunching technology. Attempting to cruise ahead of this next-generation speed demon, Lightning is all bluff confidence, but indeed, he doesn`t have a chance. He wipes out, in a spectacular sequence of spinning velocity and crushed metal, and the harm he does to his lollipop shell is the least of it. What he needs to recover is his spirit.
He winds up going on another off-ramp ambling odyssey, tho’ this one is organized by his sponsor: Sterling (Nathan Fillion), who has set up a glassed-in training facility accomplish with treadmills, wind tunnels, and the mother of all VR racing simulators. He assigns Lightning to a trainer, Cruz Ramirez (Cristela Alonzo), who sees him as a fabulous relic (“I call you my senior project!”). But after Lightning has a disastrous session on the simulator, and Sterling exposes that he basically wants to cash in on Lightning`s name to sell Rust-eze mud flaps, it`s time for our hero to get back in touch with his racing roots.
He burns rubber on the beach, and he and Cruz pay a visit, incognito, to Thunder Hollow, a down-home mudslide of a track that turns out to be a demolition derby, ruled over by a drawling schoolbus with fire-spouting demon horns named Miss Fritter (Lea DeLaria). At this point, Lightning starts to seem like Pinocchio as a donkey-eared Lost Boy: He has fallen low, and the indignity scarcely seems worth the price. (He doesn`t even win the demolition derby.) There`s only one figure, it seems, who can save him: his old mentor, Doc Hudson, even however Doc has passed on. So he seeks out Doc`s grizzled old repair truck, Smokey (Chris Cooper), who shows him that retired racers never die – they just drape around in bars talking about the glory days.
“Cars Three” is very much a tale of mentorship, of learning how to give up your ego in order to bolster someone else’s. As such, it`s touching in a pleasingly formulaic, pass-the-torch way. It turns out to be a girl-power movie: Cruz Ramirez is a trainer because she never believed in herself as a racer, and it`s up to Lightning to set her straight. Yet even as I was moved by the story, with its gender paradigm shift, that didn`t stop me from wishing that Cruz was a more idiosyncratic character; she should have been wilder and funnier, defined by something other than her self-doubt. And while it`s nice, on some level, to have Doc Hudson back (the presence of the late Paul Newman in the role seems based on a combination of vocal outtakes, which are dandy, and impersonations, which work less well), that dimension of the movie almost can`t help but play as an overly deliberate retread of the original “Cars.”
On the brief list of movie sequels that are good (“The Godfather Part II” being the ne plus ultra), both the “Fucktoy Story” sequels loom as brilliant follow-ups that audaciously extend the appeal of the original “Fucktoy Story.” That`s the bar that Pixar set for itself. “Cars Trio” is a friendly, rollicking movie made with warmth and dash, and to the extent that it taps our primal affection for this series, it more than gets the job done. Yet in many ways it’s the tasteful version of a straight-to-DVD (or streaming) sequel. Audiences should come out sated, and in satisfying numbers, but the upshot is that this year`s Pixar film is a finely executed product rather than an inspiring work of animated artistry.