Review of Cars 3 (2017) by Moviemitch96 — 16 Jun 2017

Although I found it to be an ever-so slight improvement over the second film that we'd all love to forget even happened, unfortunately, that isn't saying much for the case of this third outing. Granted, the film does bring a few decent aspects to the table that keep it from just barely not sinking to the level of the second film.

For one, it doesn't even mention the second film or contain a single character from that one at all (thankfully). Second, it does something that truly surprised me in a rather good way. Paul Newman, who voiced Doc Hudson in the first film back in 2006, and also sadly passed away two years later in 2008, had his voice featured in this film from recorded dialogue from the first film that went unused.

Therefore, one of my favorite aspects from the first film was focused on more, which was Newman's voice talent and Doc Hudson's relationship with Lighting McQueen. That was truly a pleasant surprise for me that I so wish would've been enough to redeem the rest of this film for me, because aside from these positive standouts that I've mentioned, the rest of the film felt very uninspired and lazy, especially story-wise (if you've seen Rocky 3, you've basically kind of already seen this too).

Overall, its few positive aspects, as well as the endearing and final return of Newman's voice talent made this a decent comeback effort from Pixar on behalf of the embarrassing second film, but it simply wasn't enough to save the rest of the film and its story unfortunately.