Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) is the hot-headed rookie who thinks he can win all of his races without help from anyone. His main goal is to win the much coveted Piston Cup, But after a three-way victory he must travel to California to face a rematch with his two biggest competitors. Fate however works against him and he gets lost in a small town in the middle of nowhere.

He causes mayhem and destroys their road, leading the locals to force him to clean up his mess before he can leave. Lightning initially hates his sentence but soon finds companionship and surprises amongst his new found community.

It's becoming a predictable compliment to give a Pixar movie, but with every new offering its something which cannot be ignored. The animation in Cars is magnificent. The makers have created an entire landscape which at times would easily be confused with reality. At first it seems impossible to imprint various characters onto cars but yet again a wide variety of likeable, albeit familiar, characters are created and make an impression.

Owen Wilson leads the voice cast as Lightning and it's the skill of a Pixar movie that they never throw all their money at lots of big stars as Dreamworks have. For the core audience a star cast isn't much of a selling point and also it tends to pull the viewer outside of the world the film has created. So other than Wilson its only Paul Newman who most will recognise and both manage to do decent jobs of keeping within their characters without showboating.

Its clear when the formula is finally set down where we will end up - redemption anyone? - but the journey is witty and charming all the way. What Cars doesn't really manage to do, and this is what the truly great genre counterparts do, is provide the emotion to back up the dazzling animation on offer. While I did want to see Lightning succeed in finding whatever it was that he needed, I never wanted him triumph as much as I wanted, for example, Nemo to be found.

A problem, given the target audience, was the two hour length of the film. 90 minutes is perfect for a movie targeted towards young children and there are some lags in pace throughout. Another issue, especially with the formula used, is a lack of a villain. While some of the townsfolk are slightly antagonistic there's never a real threat of anything that bad happening to Lightning. Okay so he's initially rushed to get to the big race but the time issue never really seems to be that tense. It just makes for a lack of conflict.

As with Over The Hedge, Cars has a rather hippyish sentiment with its critique on how the freeways destroyed the lure of the small town in America. Its ironic that Disney, one of the biggest corporations in the world funded it but still it's an interesting message. Cars is a hugely likeable film which does have its flaws but remains another memorable offering from the always reliable Pixar stable. Can they put a foot wrong? Well their next film Ratatouille has the unenviable task of making vegetables loveable so watch this space.

  share with:  Facebook | Digg | other sites