As you know I’m not one for the cartoons but somehow I ended up seeing this new one called CARS. What CARS is about is cars. However they are not any ordinary type of car like you’ve ever seen before, they are living cars. And when I say that I am not even talking about a Knight Rider or Herbie the Love Bug type of scenario here, I am talking about an entire society devoid of human life, but dominated by living, feeling cars with weird eyeballs on their windshields. They can make gestures and they can use their tires sort of like hands, and they have jobs, etc. Even the insects of this world are cars, but there are regular non-car plants.

These cars have not only created a civilization, but their civilization has been around long enough that the good old days are gone. The story is about Lightning McQueen, who is apparently not named after Steve McQueen despite his brave service to the cause of cars in LE MANS and BULLITT. Thanks alot, assholes. Lightning is a hotshot race car, basically a NASCAR star without a driver. Because he’s a stubborn egotistical asswipe of a car he fucks up and blows his huge lead making the big race a three way tie. One of the other racers is played by Michael Keaton but he looks like the Burt Reynolds of cars. Anyway Lightning has to go to California for another race and because he’s a celebrity he doesn’t even bother to drive there himself, he goes inside his friend, a Mack truck played by Cliff from Cheers. Basically, he is inside his friend’s ass, but you can’t completely blame him because the inside of his friend’s ass looks like some kind of luxury apartment.

But then Lightning gets lost and ends up stranded in a small town along Route 66 where he learns valuable car lessons and helps revive a dying way of car life, etc.

This movie maybe isn’t quite as effective as the other movies by these TOY STORY people, but it does work. And part of the appeal is the incredible attention to detail, even in the filmatism. For the parts about car races they take on the frinetic tics of sports broadcasting, with flashy camera moves and onscreen graphics and with car commentators and corporate sponsors. There is an entire audience of thousands of cars. Then when it gets out on the road it slows down and there is actual atmosphere. Somehow they really capture the feel of driving out on the highway at night. And when they get to the town, I think it’s called Radiator Springs, there are these quiet establishing shots with a yellow traffic light slightly buzzing as it blinks on and off. Even the sound effects are perfect. They had to figure out the sound of tires rolling around as cars “walk” along having a conversation. (more…)