We watched the Pixar movie Cars the other night (or two). It was terrible. Really.
I wasn't excited with the concept but the execution was more disappointing. Here are some of the reasons:
-the world was all vehicular and there was nothing organic about it. The scenery of the southwest was beautiful but that's just rocks. No birds, no bugs, no fish, nothing living.
-it was all about American car culture. Of course. Would have been fine in the 1950s but there's something about it in this environmentally conscious age that got on my nerves. (Dinoco, the sponsor of the big race, first appeared in Toy Story and I thought it was great -- a gas station that acknowledged that petro comes from dinosaurs and implying limited supplies and a huge timeline to create it. This idea was spoiled by Cars.)
-the designs were fairly ugly. I mean they look okay, but nothing as charismatic as Nemo or Buzz Lightyear.
-the false notes of the characters reminded me of the other Pixar movie that we don't own (we borrowed Cars from the library), A Bug's Life. I'm not even sure I've seen ABL all the way through. Why? I hate the idea of four legged ants.
-the talents were wasted. Paul Newman's worst role in years. I kept thinking how much better it would have been if they just took the audio from The Hudsucker Proxy and animated it. Owen Wilson was okay, Michael Keaton was unrecognizable and unmemorable.
-it was way too long. We watched an hour one night and then realized we still had an hour to go so we had to watch the rest another night. When it was in the theaters I took Austin to see Over the Hedge instead because it was a matter of 83 minutes vs. 116 minutes.
Overall, I thought it was well-made but ill-conceived. A rare misstep for Pixar.
3 comments:
This is the only Pixar I haven't seen. Not much inclined to after this review, which is pretty consistent with the prof reviews I read at the time it was released. By all accounts, this was a labour of love for Lassiter (a Route 66 and car buff). I wonder how much of the failure of this movie to work as well as previous Pixars has to do with that blinding him to its problems?
Another factor that might have pushed Cars ahead of other more deserving ideas was its very merchandise-able characters. Harrison liked the movie ok, but he LOVES the video game. I mention this because I saw in the paper yesterday that strong sales of "Cars" merchandise was credited for Disney's strong profits last quarter.
I was going to agree with you, but you don't allow anonymous posting. I would've said that I hate Cars to death because the kids here watch it all the damn time, every day without fail. But without anonymous posting, you just come off as some kind of creeper, so instead I'll say fuck you for bitching about a goddamn kid's film. Well, you know how to prevent this in future, so I'm off.
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