Cars 2
2011
D: John Lasseter
**********
Pros: Clever action, Some funny parts, Good scenery
Cons: Bad story, Annoying protagonist, Questionable
villains, Missed opportunities for automotive in-jokes
If you ask
anyone but me what the worst Pixar movie is, they’ll probably tell you that it
was Cars 2. If you ask me, I’ll say it was the first Cars, with A Bug’s Life being a close second.
Cars 2 is no animated masterpiece,
but I definitely believe it to be a marked improvement over the first, if only
because it’s more fun. Perhaps when Cars came out, no one was ready for the
prospect of a bad Pixar movie. They had
a preconceived notion that it would be good, so they gave it a pass. As the truth sunk in, they became prepared to
show the sequel no mercy, even though it ended up being more entertaining in a
lot of ways.
Now I’ll give Cars a short mini-review.
Everyone says it was basically Doc
Hollywood with cars. Aside
from the ripped-off premise, nothing interesting happens in the movie. The only part of it I found amusing was in
post-credits sequence when Sarge (R. Lee Ermey) is giving off-roading lessons
to some pampered city SUV’s. I found it
particularly amusing considering my feelings about the SUV craze. I will note, however, that the credits also
featured a painful metajoke in which John Ratzenberger’s character watches
other Pixar movies and points out how he’s in all of them. Outside some racing references, the movie
tends to drop the ball on subtle inside jokes for car enthusiasts. For example, Jay Leno cameos as the most unflattering depiction of a Lincoln Town Car ever. Leno is actually a well-documented performance
car enthusiast, but I guess someone at Pixar thought “Jay Limo” was too good a
pun to pass up. Maybe I’m just cranky
because the movie managed to make a Town Car of all things look ugly. Overall, it was a mediocre movie, and I give
a 3/10. I find it disappointing that
this happened during 2006, which was actually a very good year for movies.
Both Cars 2 and its predecessor are known for
a character design that breaks away from the more common design for
anthropomorphic cars. Instead of having
the cars’ headlights as their eyes, they put them on the windshield. This is actually a design I always preferred,
even though it was never popular before Cars. Of course, nowadays everyone draws a cartoon
car draws it Cars-style, and it’s
getting a little tiresome. I draw anthro
cars with windshield eyes, but I avoid that specific style.
 |
| I also like to make them hot. |
Now, Cars
wasn’t the first to do this. The design
of the movie was directly inspired by the classic cartoon Susie the Little Blue Coupe, and I remember once seeing an evil
pink limousine on Bonkers that had
that had windshield eyes and one of Charlie Adler’s annoying female
voices. Overall, character design in
these movies is something I find cute, but I have one gripe about it. I generally picture the engine block being a
muzzle, with the mouth extended along the bottom. Instead, the movie has the mouths at the
front of the cars, with actual human lips where the bumper should be. I find that slightly off-putting.
In Cars 2 Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson)
is challenged to race a world tour with an arrogant Italian Formula 1 car
Fransesco Bernoulli (John Turturro) in an ultimately inconsequential subplot
that seems cliched. McQueen declines the race in
order to spend time with his friends, but is driven into it when Mater (Larry
the Cable Guy) needlessly provokes the rival.
McQueen obligates himself to race in this tournament while his
girlfriend Sally (Bonnie Hunt) conveniently (more so for the plot than the
audience) insists on his taking Mater with him.
While on the tournament, Mater stumbles into a spy mission, and becomes
involved in a battle of good vs. evil. I will note at this point that the movie respectfully acknowledges Paul Newman's death through the absence of his character, but does not do the same for George Carlin.
Making Mater
the main protagonist of the movie has to be one of the most baffling decisions
made by Pixar. This was clearly done to
appeal to children who loved the first movie and, surprisingly, Mater as well. It’s okay to appeal to children, but never at
the expense of the adults. I’ve always
found it surprising that children find characters like Mater and Jar Jar Binks
funny. Even a young child I never found
such characters amusing. Mater is an
annoying buffoon played by an unfunny comedian.
He spends most of the time getting in people’s faces and bumbling
through action scenes (the latter being a cliché I hate). It’s not even until halfway through the movie
when he realizes the seriousness of the situation. He comes off particularly annoying at the
beginning of the film, when he constantly interrupts Lightning and Sally during
their alone time. Actually, I can
understand people hating this movie more than the first based on this character
alone and the screen time he has.
Personally, I never found Lightning McQueen all that much more likable,
anyway. He seemed kind of douchey to
me. Mater is like that guy at work who
tries to get along with you but doesn’t know how to keep his distance. You know you shouldn’t hate him, but you
can’t help it. These characters I find
less annoying on screen than in real life.
Unless they’re annoying you personally, it’s hard to hate someone who
doesn’t have a malicious bone in his body.
I’m angrier at the movie’s writers for putting the character on the
screen than I am at the character himself.
The conflict
Mater finds himself in revolves around an evil plan hatched by the Lemons, who
actually have a very understandable motivation.
The group consists of old, shoddily-made cars who have endured years of
ridicule and mistreatment because of what they were. Prior to the movie’s events, they had acquired
a great find of offshore oil and they wanted to use their monopoly over this
indispensable resource to gain the respect they’ve been denied. Their leader, Sir Miles Axlerod (Eddie
Izzard) poses as a wealthy socialite who has converted himself to electric and
has developed a clean-burning alternative fuel that is compatible with internal
combustion engines. While the fuel is
being publicly tested by the participants in the global racing tournament, the
Lemons will use a special ray that will cause a car running on the fuel to
malfunction. The overall intent is to
destroy the public’s faith in alternative fuels, thus securing their oil
monopoly.
The most
obvious flaw with these villains is the same one we have with the hyenas in The Lion King. It’s a group of people who have been
systematically marginalized by society, and they have resorted to extreme
measures to resist this. Sure, if
they’re actually doing something evil, they should be stopped, but there should
also be acknowledgement that their actions were a direct result of their
mistreatment. The movie does make some
half-hearted attempt to address this in an opening scene in which Mater helps
an innocent lemon, who comments that he’s always polite to lemons. Clearly, the only reason this scene exists is
reassure us that the hero is not responsible for this situation (making him
possibly the most likable character in the movie. Seriously, Mater of all people) and that not all lemons are evil. It’s more than what The Lion King did for the hyenas, but it still takes more than one
tacked-on scene to address a movie’s unfortunate implications. A better way to address this is to feature
lemons among the heroes of the movie. It
would have made far more sense to make Rod Redline (Bruce Campbell) an actual lemon rather than a Mustang who can
transform into a lemon to spy on the bad guys.
We could even have the villains call them traitors to their kind. What makes it worse is that the good guys are
constantly fighting these antagonists in action scenes. While I’ve never had a problem with an
unusually strong hero defeating average-strength villains, these villains are
basically the automotive equivalent of disabled people. Would you like Batman nearly as much if went
around beating up people in wheelchairs?
That’s pretty much what’s happening in this movie.
Another
problem is that the Lemons’ plan makes no sense. While ensuring a monopoly in oil may help
them short-term, anthropomorphic cars would need a clean, renewable alternative
to fossil fuel more than we do. It’s
their food, after all. Wouldn’t it make
more sense for the Lemons to use their newfound wealth to subsidize research
for alternative fuels? The energy
hunger crisis would be solved, plus the Lemons would have the respect they
wanted without being the bad guys.
Another thing is that their plan would only result in their own fake
alternative fuel being discredited. The
cars are still going to want to find an alternative fuel. What’s more, it’s eventually revealed that
alternative fuel they proposed is nothing more than gasoline with an additive
meant to react to their death ray. How
do the other cars not notice this?
Wouldn’t they tell by what’s being put into their bodies and what’s
coming out their exhaust pipes? Isn’t
there a third-party organization that tests the fuel? How does no one notices this? And once this is found out, it wouldn’t
discredit alternative fuels.
It’s also revealed that Axlerod faked his
conversion to electric power, and that he is still an oil-leaking,
gasoline-fueled Lemon. How does he hide
the fact that he still runs on gas?
Where does his exhaust go? Does
he have an onboard storage tank for it (I actually thought this would help the
pollution problem when I was 9.)? Why
doesn’t he sound like a gas-powered car?
How come people can’t recognize him as a Lemon just by looking at him and telling what model he is?
The makers of
the movie seem to be just as clueless about what cars are lemons as the cars
themselves. There could have been so
much opportunity for subtle in-jokes for car buffs in this premise, but it’s
nothing but missed opportunities. The
most noticeable example is how some of the bad cars included amongst the ranks
of the Lemons aren’t even bad cars. AMC
Gremlins, for example, actually have a reputation for reliability and ruggedness
and were an early proof that America actually could make a good economy car. Their
infamy mostly comes from alleged ugliness, which I never I quite saw
myself. Frankly, I think they’re a damn
sight better looking than most modern compacts.
Of course, this wasn’t so much out of ignorance. I think Pixar wanted to put cars like
Chevrolet Vegas and Ford Pintos among the lemons, but didn’t want to provoke GM
or Ford. Therefore they stuck to mocking
car companies who are no longer around to complain. Of course, you could have included these cars
among the Lemons while acknowledging that they weren’t bad cars. Cars that were unjustly seen as lemons
because of their looks would have the same motivation as the true lemons. They could do the dirty work and heavy lifting,
and there would be good potential for drama between the villains who were
marginalized for erroneous reasons and those who weren’t. I would have also liked to see some more
affluent bad cars, like old Jaguars, as the bad guys. The Aston Martin Lagonda, for example, was a
turkey, but it had an elegant, lean and sinister look that would have been
great for a villain.
While I actually avoided seeing this movie in
theaters, it actually has some great action scenes that make me wish I
had. The first scene, involving an
explosive chase on an oil rig, was actually really, really good. There’s even a bathroom brawl with cars. That is cool.
Car chases, of course, have always been a staple of action movies, so I
like how this movie actually takes advantage of the combination of action with
cartoon cars. I don’t know of many
things that have taken advantage of this and I think Cars 2 at least deserves credit for this. While the movie does borrow a lot of tropes
from Bond movies, like armed cars, 60’s action sports car spy Finn McMissile (Michael
Caine) and sexy supercar spy Holley Shiftwell (Emily Mortimer), but it’s plot
is still its own, so at least it doesn’t fall into the hole of being “James
Bond with Cars.” I must note that these
supposedly smart spies seem oblivious to Mater's foolishness; McMissile simply
believes, contrary to common sense, that Mater is just pretending he’s stupid
as a cover.
The scenery of
this movie is good, particularly in the Oil Rig scene and in Japan. There are also a couple funny jokes. There is a rare moment of great metahumor
when Mater runs into a car who has her eyes in her headlights in the more
conventional style and freaks out. Also,
even though it was arguably inappropriate for a family movie, I admit to
laughing at the Japanese bathroom scene.
I found some accidental humor in the fact that Thomas Kretschmann voices
the evil Professor Zundapp in the same wooden, not-giving-a-shit manner like in
every other movie I’ve seen him in. I’ve
never seen any of his more respectable movies so I don’t know much about him as
an actor, but every subpar American movie I’ve seen him in he just doesn’t
care. It’s hilarious.
Cars 2 also seems to be one of the more
violent Pixar movies. The remains of a
spy are shown after having been put in a compactor, multiple cars are seen
getting destroyed in action scenes, and one of the characters is killed off in
a rather brutal way. He’s given the
alternative fuel and then shot with the ray until he explodes, with the camera
panning away to a screen showing a subtle reflection of it happening. This scene is frustrating because the
character is the American spy played by Bruce Campbell. Right.
They make a movie where LARRY THE CABLE GUY is the main character, then
they kill off BRUCE CAMPBELL the first chance they get?! Were they trying
to piss off people with this movie?
I know some
people might by asking me, “Hey, Scorpio, you can’t just give this movie more
credit than Cars and A Bug’s Life just because it has cool
action scenes.” Well, yes, that’s
exactly what I’m doing. I’d rather watch
a bad movie with good action than just a bad movie (although I may concede that
A Bug’s Life may be a little better). Also, those movies were bland ripoffs, and
I’d take dumb fun over a bland ripoff any day.
Don’t get me wrong, Cars 2 is
a bad movie. The plot is absurd and the
characters can be annoying, but the movie has its moments. It's better than Cars for the same reason the prequels are preferable to the Sequel Trilogy; it may be heavily flawed, but at least it's creative and interesting. It has also come to my attention that Disney
(sans Pixar) is planning a spinoff.
While the prospect of cartoon jet fighters is pretty awesome, it doesn’t
look that good either.
PS: For any British people reading this, I’d like to know
if there are any high-ranking British officials who are of Czech descent. Because I’m pretty sure I saw a Tatra T87 in
the queen’s court.
