Cars
The best Dollar Movie of the summer.
DMR grades it an A.
Cars is a feast for the eyes that is by turns heartwarming and tender. It’s the best movie to show up on a dollar screen this summer and nearly as good as Pixar’s Finding Nemo.
Some critics have suggested the storyline of Cars isn’t as strong as other Pixar movies like Monsters Inc or The Incredibles. I agree. But that’s like saying Reggie Jackson wasn’t as good a hitter as Willie Mays. True enough. But if I was picking players for my baseball team I’d have a place for Mr. October.
Cars is about a charismatic hotshot young racecar named Lightning McQueen in the NASCAR-like Piston Cup in a world where all sentient life is a vehicle of some kind.
McQueen, voiced by Owen Wilson, finishes the final race of the season tied with two other cars, The King, an old-school racer (Richard Petty), and Chick Hicks (Michael Keaton), the perennial second-runner itching to replace The King. To settle the tie, McQueen, The King and Hicks meet in a grudge match race a week later across the country in California.
McQueen heads west in his reliable car hauler Mack (John Ratzenberger). But in a middle of the night mishap, McQueen rolls out of his trailer and creates automotive havoc in the fast-fading and forgotten desert town of Radiator Springs, miles off the Interstate but squarely on Route 66 in ‘Carburetor County.’
As punishment, McQueen is sentenced to community service to repave the strip of the 'Mother Road' that he ruined, and which runs smack through the middle of the Radiator Springs. He tries to finish his sentencing ASAP in a slipshod way, but the town won’t accept it. In getting it right, McQueen is drawn into the lives of the ‘towncars’ with whom he finds friendship, inner peace and even enlightenment.
The towncars include: Paul Newman as 'Doc Hudson,' the senior member of the town with a carefully shaded past; Tony Shalhoub as 'Luigi,' the Ferrari-worshipping tire dealer; Larry the Cable Guy as 'Mater,' the rust-bucket tow truck; Cheech Marin as Ramone, the lowrider paint shop owner; Bonnie Hunt as 'Sally Carrera,' the proprietor of the Cozy Cone Motel; and George Carlin as 'Fillmore' as the local hippie drop-out and brewer of ‘organic’ fuel.
The cast also includes broadcasters Bob Costas, and National Public Radio’s Tom and Ray Magliozzi, racers Darrell Waltrip, Dale Earnhardt Jr., and Mario Andretti, along with Jay Leno and Jeremy Piven. It’s a deep and talented cast and only Owen Wilson disappoints. His laid-back style, so funny in other movies, doesn't generate much traction in Cars.
From the first frame… set on a monster Southern racetrack, to the desert locales in and around Radiator Springs… the movie is astonishing to look at. The race sequences are so true to life that only the eyes in the windshield give it away. The desert scenes, by contrast, are better than real. They mix “eco-porn” shots of the red rock country of Utah, with the iconic saguaro cactuses of Arizona’s Sonoran Desert. The resulting visuals are a striking, if unlikely, mixture of Randy Owens race care lithos and a Nature Conservancy donor’s premium!
Cars is rated G for general audiences.
I give Cars an A.
The Dollar Movie Review Grading System: The Dollar Movie Review grades on a curve. Movies that make choices to be course or vulgar are downgraded a full to a half grade or more. Likewise, movies that don’t gross out or offend too much can be upgraded as ‘a thanks for trying’ attaboy. If the story and Owen Wilson had been better, I would have given it an A+.
Some critics have suggested the storyline of Cars isn’t as strong as other Pixar movies like Monsters Inc or The Incredibles. I agree. But that’s like saying Reggie Jackson wasn’t as good a hitter as Willie Mays. True enough. But if I was picking players for my baseball team I’d have a place for Mr. October.
Cars is about a charismatic hotshot young racecar named Lightning McQueen in the NASCAR-like Piston Cup in a world where all sentient life is a vehicle of some kind.
McQueen, voiced by Owen Wilson, finishes the final race of the season tied with two other cars, The King, an old-school racer (Richard Petty), and Chick Hicks (Michael Keaton), the perennial second-runner itching to replace The King. To settle the tie, McQueen, The King and Hicks meet in a grudge match race a week later across the country in California.
McQueen heads west in his reliable car hauler Mack (John Ratzenberger). But in a middle of the night mishap, McQueen rolls out of his trailer and creates automotive havoc in the fast-fading and forgotten desert town of Radiator Springs, miles off the Interstate but squarely on Route 66 in ‘Carburetor County.’
As punishment, McQueen is sentenced to community service to repave the strip of the 'Mother Road' that he ruined, and which runs smack through the middle of the Radiator Springs. He tries to finish his sentencing ASAP in a slipshod way, but the town won’t accept it. In getting it right, McQueen is drawn into the lives of the ‘towncars’ with whom he finds friendship, inner peace and even enlightenment.
The towncars include: Paul Newman as 'Doc Hudson,' the senior member of the town with a carefully shaded past; Tony Shalhoub as 'Luigi,' the Ferrari-worshipping tire dealer; Larry the Cable Guy as 'Mater,' the rust-bucket tow truck; Cheech Marin as Ramone, the lowrider paint shop owner; Bonnie Hunt as 'Sally Carrera,' the proprietor of the Cozy Cone Motel; and George Carlin as 'Fillmore' as the local hippie drop-out and brewer of ‘organic’ fuel.
The cast also includes broadcasters Bob Costas, and National Public Radio’s Tom and Ray Magliozzi, racers Darrell Waltrip, Dale Earnhardt Jr., and Mario Andretti, along with Jay Leno and Jeremy Piven. It’s a deep and talented cast and only Owen Wilson disappoints. His laid-back style, so funny in other movies, doesn't generate much traction in Cars.
From the first frame… set on a monster Southern racetrack, to the desert locales in and around Radiator Springs… the movie is astonishing to look at. The race sequences are so true to life that only the eyes in the windshield give it away. The desert scenes, by contrast, are better than real. They mix “eco-porn” shots of the red rock country of Utah, with the iconic saguaro cactuses of Arizona’s Sonoran Desert. The resulting visuals are a striking, if unlikely, mixture of Randy Owens race care lithos and a Nature Conservancy donor’s premium!
Cars is rated G for general audiences.
I give Cars an A.
The Dollar Movie Review Grading System: The Dollar Movie Review grades on a curve. Movies that make choices to be course or vulgar are downgraded a full to a half grade or more. Likewise, movies that don’t gross out or offend too much can be upgraded as ‘a thanks for trying’ attaboy. If the story and Owen Wilson had been better, I would have given it an A+.
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