Running On Empty

Life's a gas: From left to right, Chick Hicks (voiced by Michael Keaton), Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson), and The King (Richard Petty) race for the Piston Cup. Courtesy Buena Vista Pictures.

The near-universal love for films like Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo and The Incredibles is a testament not only to Pixar’s breathtaking animation, but the studio’s scrupulous writing. Pixar is cognizant that its audience is not just wide-eyed ankle-biters, but their leery parents, too. To captivate viewers who aren’t easily mollified by visual whiz-bang, Pixar takes great pains to create solid narrative arcs, flesh out the inexorable slapstick with sly witticisms and cram its scripts with pop-culture allusions. The best Pixar films provide well-crafted entertainment that diverts the eye, warms the heart and, yes, stimulates the cortex. It’s precisely in the latter two categories that Cars stalls.

A celebration of the fanatical roar and whirr of NASCAR racing, the film opens in a packed speedway, where an upstart car named Lightning McQueen (voiced by Owen Wilson) is winning the race for the prestigious Piston Cup. The animation is, of course, astounding. The electrifying cinematography and meticulous detail will make you forget that you’re watching a cartoon; even the most standoffish viewers will find themselves inching to the edge of their seats. A model of arrogant youth, Lightning refuses to have his tires changed. Sure enough, in the final lap, one tire, then another, blows out, allowing Lightning’s closest rivals, Chick Hicks (Michael Keaton) and The King (former real-life racer Richard Petty), to catch up. The cars end up in a three-way tie. Due to the inconclusive result, Lightning, Chick and the King must compete in a run-off race in California one week later to determine the Piston Cup champ.

Between the racetrack action and punny references to auto-celebs like sportscaster Bob Cutlass and late-night talk-show host Jay Limo, the first third of the film is quite gratifying. On his way to California, Lightning misses a key exit, gets caught in a police chase and ends up careening into a small town named Radiator Springs. Having literally torn up the road on his way in, Lightning appears in court and is sentenced to community service. Only after repaving the town’s main strip can he proceed to the big race.

Radiator Springs is home to a gallery of melancholic characters, who all conform to a familiar stereotype: they include a rusted but bighearted tow truck named Mater (Larry the Cable Guy, playing the hillbilly to the hilt); a Volkswagen minibus named Fillmore (George Carlin), a hippie throwback who blasts Jimi Hendrix and sells “organic” oil; a Model T with a Latino accent (Cheech Marin, of course) who is always sporting a garish new paint job. While pat, the characterizations are harmless and yield some clever japes. For his part, Wilson seems unusually energized. For once, he’s not trying to ingratiate himself with that soporific drawl of his.

Off the beaten track: Mater the tow truck (Larry The Cable Guy) and Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson), at right, languish in Radiator Springs. Courtesy Buena Vista Pictures.

Every kids’ film requires some sort of message, and the premise here is that Radiator Springs is the town that time forgot. Located along Route 66, it was a once-thriving burgh, but since the paving of a multi-lane superhighway several miles to the south, most travellers just pass it by. Listening to a bunch of cars gripe about the evils of commuting feels a little disingenuous to me; if they weren’t immersed in child-like logic, the screenwriters might have realized that it was our car culture that facilitated freeways in the first place. But hey, that’s just the rational adult in me.

The fact is, Cars is more kid-oriented than most Pixar films. Directed by John Lasseter, who helmed A Bug’s Life and Toy Story 2, Cars was obviously conceived to appeal to gaffers who worship Bob the Builder, an animated series that also anthropomorphizes machines. Imbuing animals, robots, even toys with human feelings can be done in a reasonably credible fashion. Anthropomorphizing an automobile might seem like a clever conceit, but a 90-minute movie requires more than a visual ruse — you should feel compelled to care about the characters from beginning to end. Lightning learns timeless lessons about empty materialism, friendship and loyalty, but even the most credulous youngster will have trouble reconciling the growing tenderness between Lightning and a metallic-blue Porsche named Sally Carrera (Bonnie Hunt). I think I speak for my inner child when I say that seeing two cars get cozy is just plain wack.

Cars lacks the poignancy of past Pixar pairings, like the fish voiced by Albert Brooks and Ellen DeGeneres in Finding Nemo, or John Goodman’s beast and Billy Crystal’s cyclops in Monsters Inc. Cars provides an occasionally exhilarating ride, but like its mechanized subjects, is unworthy of any deeper emotional investment.

Cars opens June 9 across Canada.

Andre Mayer writes about the arts for CBC.ca.

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