Review of Cars 2 (2011) by Ladychaos — 22 Nov 2017

Now this movies had (still gets)some pretty bad press and reviews, and I can see why but it's really not all that bad. Pretty good movie actually with beautiful animation, good music, interesting scenes and places, international race cars, Lightning McQueen and the it showed more of the Car world.The spy stuff and the plots involving oil, new fuel types, car discrimination and friendship might go over some kids heads but it is also rather interesting if you study it more. The only real issue that I have is with the character, Mater, himself. I am not a big Mater fan, of his personality type or humour but I can see why he appeals to kids and others, so maybe that's why he's the real star of this film.

Basically the film revolves around a plot to turn people (the cars) towards a new fuel type that's supposed to be better for them, and an international race is there to promote the fuel. However, the new fuel is really just gasoline and by making the new fuel look bad, by hurting the racers using the fuel, the cars behind all this hope to turn people back to oil ( there's a huge new secret oil field discovered by these guys early o in the film)and get rich and powerful. The cars doing this are 'lemon' cars or ones who are not well made and break down frequently and get made fun of.So they feel rather angry at the world for their poor treatment.

There are also spies (the good guys) from Britain, America, etc ( A rather James bond like one and a pretty purple Jaguar type).

And Mater basically gets mixed up in all this whilst Lightning races against a heap of other racers, though this really isn't paid as much attention to as it should have been. It all ends with mater uncovering the lead villain, making up with McQueen after an argument and has messages like be yourself and accept others. Good messages for children I suppose. The movie made me smile and laugh with it's over the top nonsense and beautiful animation, as well as amusing my nephew and nieces. The main issue though (with many people) is still Mater and his bumbling ways, the lack of attention to the races and Lightning, plus there was some violence like the American spy getting blown up and the racers engines blowing out from a lazer but I have seen worse. Anyone remember Littlefoot's mother being injured and dying? Now that's painful and scary cartoon violence. There was also the fact that Lightning doesn't win in any major races and the other characters from Radiator Springs felt like they were put in just to fill space.plus for a movie promoting international race scenes they only went to 3 places, whilst if you look at the Cars 2 artbook you can see that various other types of races (endurance, outback and ice) were planned, in a variety of places like Russia and Germany. Why Pixar didn't focus more on or include these is beyond me. It would have appealed to many to see more races, race types and countries I think and less of the Mater/spy stuff.

Still I do like the film and it isn't a depressing disappointment like Cars 3 is, so 8/10 for me. 2 of for Mater I'm afraid though.