Review of Cars 3 (2017) by John M — 14 Dec 2017

Back to the well. Much like this series, Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) is getting old. He can't keep up with the suped up cars that use laws of aerodynamics to win, and everybody thinks he should go into retirement.

He's not ready to hang it up though, and he wants to win one more race so as to return to his former glory. This is a series that has been lacking for a while now, and I've never fully comprehended why Pixar has chosen to continue it.

John Lasseter just has a thing for these talking cars, and I suppose it is hard to fault somebody for being passionate about something, even though I don't quite get it. After the awfulness that is Cars 2, I'm kind of surprised that they didn't just call it quits.

I do have some positives to say about Cars 3, with the biggest one being that it is not Cars 2. What I had been hearing about this is that this is the best of the series, and I will say that this sentiment is not saying much.

The characters have never been endearing, and instead of thinking of clever dialogue or heartfelt moments to include, they'll just drop car puns all over the place. If there is one area that I do award points for, it is the animation itself.

It is well-render and looks better than the previous two movies put together, so I did at the very least appreciate it from that perspective. That said, I still don't feel like this is all that creative.

Once we got to about the halfway point, I was able to more or less map out how the rest of the movie was going to go, and I feel like I was about 80% correct. Perhaps this is just the curse that accompanies watching too many movies, but I wasn't trying all that hard, which to me means that the writers to this needed to come up with better core concepts.

Although to give credit where credit is due, I did think it was funny that they are pretty much trolling Owen Wilson into saying "Oh wow". I do still feel like this series is Pixar's blemish.

Just because it is better than the others doesn't necessarily mean that there is a reason to watch it. Nobody was really asking Lightning to return, and it shows in the story department. At least they had the common sense to learn from their mistakes by including less Mater and choosing not to do a spy story line, because that all failed as hard as can be.

Cars 3 is alright, and it might hold your kid's attention.