Pixar sure didn’t have me in tears this summer, did they?
I’m kind of flabbergasted here. This is truly new ground – the Pixar bad decision. Sequel to Cars, huh? Did we really like Cars that much? I sooner, and much sooner at that, go for, say, The Incrediblers or Refinding Nemo or Yetis, Ltd.: A Division of Monsters, Inc.
Pixar’s portfolio ranked by imdb rating:
[threecol_one][typography font=”Molengo” size=”14″ size_format=”px” color=”green”]PIXAR FILM[/typography]
- Toy Story 3
- Wall-E
- Up
- Toy Story
- Finding Nemo
- The Incredibles
- Ratatouille
- Toy Story 2
- Monsters, Inc.
- Cars
- A Bug’s Life
[/threecol_one]
[threecol_one][typography font=”Molengo” size=”14″ size_format=”px” color=”green”]YEAR[/typography]
2010
2008
2009
1995
2003
2004
2007
1999
2001
2006
1998[/threecol_one]
[threecol_one_last][typography font=”Molengo” size=”14″ size_format=”px” color=”green”]IMDB[/typography]
8.6
8.5
8.3
8.2
8.2
8.1
8.1
8.0
8.0
7.4
7.3
[/threecol_one_last]
This isn’t far from where I’d rank them – Bug’s Life and Cars belong at the bottom, no question. The Cars themes always bugged me: an homage to Route 66? The growth of a talented asshole? Or how about the ugly pandering to the NASCAR crowd? Yes, if there’s one thing we need desperately in this world, it’s awareness that sporting events consisting of ungodly wastes of natural resources are to be cherished.
Then, of course, are the players of Cars – the two most prominent, Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) and Mater (Larry the Cable Guy) both heavily featured in Cars 2, are fairly shallow yet talkative fools. Larry the Cable Guy in particular is an odd choice to champion. He has yet to succeed, filmwise, in human form as the idiot who learns a valuable lesson about ________. Why would we the audience suddenly love the animated version of this persona? And yet, despite Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector, Delta Farce and Witless Protection, Larry gets yet another movie to act stupid and learn something. Pixar, where are your heads at?
Cars 2 is not without charm. Yes, it still bugs me that cars would watch other cars race. That whole major plot line seems wrong. People watch cars race. People don’t generally care about watching people race, especially over long distances. Wouldn’t cars find other cars going fast kind of blasé? I kind of enjoyed the spy subplot in Cars 2, and the animation is wonderful. The Italian race in Porto Corsa is imagined so vividly that I actually wanted to go there – into an animated film to discover and rediscover its beauty. And yet, this idea, by itself, disturbs me. Pixar got into this game with great animation. Toy Story was groundbreaking and well ahead of its time from a visual perspective. Since that time, Pixar’s animation has been matched and arguably surpassed; Pixar has thrived because its writing and imagination, like in the original Toy Story, has not been surpassed. With Cars 2, I feel like Pixar deliberately concentrated on the animation and let the writing fall to the wayside – this is like Babe Ruth having a 15 home run season because he wanted to focus on batting average. Ask any baseball fan how silly that idea is. Ask any movie fan what the Hell Pixar did here. It wasn’t good.
Rated G, 106 Minutes
D: John Lasseter, Brad Lewis
W: Ben Queen, John Lasseter, Brad Lewis & Dan Fogelman
Genre: Marketing
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Little boys into NASCAR and Asperger’s syndrome
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: The foes of mass consumption
