Review of Cars (2006) by Victor T — 16 Jun 2015

You have seen a world populated by toys, bugs, monsters, fish and superheroes. How could you progress from that? Well, Pixar decided that they will know revive a concept for a short animated film from the late 90´s and make it a feature length film in their resume. The result was the film that many people consider the Pixar´s first misstep or even qualify as a failure: "Cars".

In world here cars are alive and possess some human features, we follow Lightning McQueen a racer car whops life goal is to win the prestigious Piston Cup but due to some circumstances, McQueen finds himself in a forgotten town named "Radiator Springs".

The six previous Pixar films have succeeded due to their beautiful, fun, creative and memorable world so the idea of making a film about a world ruled by anthropomorphic vehicles is a questionable choice as it is an idea that puts limits to the creative minds of Pixar and it truly shows. "Cars" is a film that has beautiful animation but it isn't as impressive as previous films (it's much easier to make an object made of steel than creating biological beings), the characters work in the narrative but aren't really that memorable -with the exception of one-, the story is the least creative that Pixar has ever written (its more cliché than "A Bug´s Life" but it lacks the charm that made that film lovely), the "car world" is so bizarre that at time I´m more focused asking questions about it than being amazed by the originality, and it lacks any memorable scene. But even with all those failures, "Cars" still has some goodness: The side characters may be just stereotypes in the form of cars and may be forgettable but there are amusing when the they get their moment, the jokes may be limited due to the concept and some of the jokes may not work at all but some of them really make you laugh out loud (I always laugh with "Respect the classics man! Its Hendrix"), the cliché story is executed in a serviceable way, the Pixar heart touch is weak here but is more than present, and I really like the resolution to the films main conflict because it fits perfectly with the theme and it doesn't feels forced.

"Cars" represents a little downfall in terms of storytelling and creativity for Pixar and its undeniable their first questionable film but it still has a charm to it. If we compared it to other Pixar films, this is in the bottom of the barrel but if you look at it without that mindset, it is a well-made animated film that has some good in it.