RBR: Cars 2

The general consensus is that Cars 2 gave Pixar its first clunker. For many that came as a surprise, but I frankly saw this coming a mile away. The first Cars film was my least favorite in the Pixar catalog. I found that one to be slow and uninteresting. I certainly would not use those words to describe this second entry however. Tonally, this film is the complete opposite. There's plenty of loud action and even more noise coming from Larry the Cable Guy's Mater, who takes center stage in this film. Why Pixar chose to center the film around him is baffling. What's even more disturbing is their attempt to make us feel sympathetic towards this uneducated, obnoxious character. Mater's storyline is an unnecessarily complicated spy plot that finds him accidentally getting involved with other spies who are investigated a plot against alternative fuel. Meanwhile Lightning McQueen is involved in a World Grand Prix, but the outcome of that race is completely inconsequential. While the people at Pixar are usually so good at crafting engaging stories, this one feels very repetitive. It's just an endless sequence of unfunny Mater humor, chase scene, race scene, repeat. Watching this I almost felt like this was intended to be a script for a sequel to The Incredibles and then at the last minute they decided that Cars was a more profitable franchise, so they shoehorned this story onto their world. And yet, for all of the film's problems, I still can't ignore that the film looks absolutely gorgeous. The backgrounds of several different European cities and the animation in each of the driving sequences looks great. It's just a shame that the story couldn't match the visuals this time around. While this is not a great Pixar film, it's still better than most of the animated films offered by any of the other studios. Still it's disheartening to see that Pixar isn't perfect and that they are capable of making a bad film every once in a while. It's ironic that a film about metal and machines is the one that showed us that Pixar is human. Rating: ***